List some differences between text and binary data files. Text files store lines of characters, intended to be human-readable if printed, displayed to the screen, read into a text editor, etc. Binary files cntain arbitrary byte values which make little or no sense if interpreted as characters. Binary files may be smaller, and if read and written in a simpleminded way, they may be more efficient to read and write, and the code to do so may be easier to write.
Text files are quite portable.
Binary files will not necessarily work if they are moved between machines having different word sizes or data formats, or between compilers which lay out data structures differently in memory. It's easy to create, inspect, and modify text files using standard tools. Binary file maintenance generally requires specially-written tools. Devise and implement a way for long descriptions to be read from the data file. There are many ways of doing this.