Why should I use a human readable file format?

Question

Why should I use a human readable file format in preference to a binary one? Is there ever a situation when this isn\'t the case?

EDIT: I did have this as an explana

Answer 1

Why should I use a human readable file format in preference to a binary one? Is there ever a situation when this isn't the case?

Yes, compressed volumes (zip, jpeg, mp3, etc) would be suboptimal if they were human readable.