[attractivechaos]

> Another thing is human readable is typically synonymous with unindexed

Indexing is not directly related to binary vs text. Many text formats in bioinformatics are indexed and many binary formats are not when they are not designed with indexing in mind.

> a human-eye check is tedious/impossible because you have to scroll through gigabytes to find what you want.

Yes, indexing is better but without indexing, you can use command line tools to extract the portion you want to look at and then pipe to "more" or "less".