[hittaruki]

Isn't an emacs buffer exactly that? Depending on what modes are turned on the way the file data is presented will also change.

For ex, how you can open a svg file, if you use the image mode you see the image representation otherwise you get the code.

[cyphar]

Emacs buffers are copies of the representation, not actual representations. The author had a talk at a recent linux.conf.au (can't find the link right now), which explains it much better than I could.