Helen,

Thanks for adding some clarity to this for me.

If I'm understanding correctly, the <65535> in
BLOB (65535,0) is an essentially meaningless
description of the SEGMENT LENGTH?

Part of the confusion about this is the order:
In the (IB) reference, the SUB_TYPE is declared
before the SEGMENT LENGTH.

> Another thing - that's better from a design POV - is to create a
> domain for your text blobs and then alter the binary blob column
> type to your domain:
>
> create domain plaintext
> blob sub_type 1 /* text */;
> commit;
>
> alter yourtable
> alter yourblob type plaintext;
>
> Note that you're not changing anything in the data by doing
> this. You're just making the text features available to your
> blobs, basically telling the engine and your applications that
> the data in these blobs is string.

I suggest that we consider some term other than
plaintext, since that is the specific boolean
property that the RichText component uses to
differentiate the RichText from the Plain.

In one of my apps, this is a much used property.
It has many tables, all of which are specifically
used for either Rich or Plain text.

Perhaps <textonly> instead of <plaintext>.