71–80 of 349 posts
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TeX users would like a word. Of course, that requires learning TeX notation for those reading it without an interpreter.
Yeah, go teach a 60-year-old math teacher to use TeX.
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Plain-text just needs to be the format. Checkout (e.g.) Markdown editors like Typora. The underlying format is Markdown, but it can be edited and displayed in a more visual fashion. With the text being in plain-text, it guarantees someone the base ability to just open up (e.g.) Notepad.exe if all else fails vs. trying to open up a Powerpoint '97 presentation with embedded RealMedia files in 2017.
You almost certainly can open PowerPoint 97 files today. Probably RealMedia too. Even better, going forward, pptx (and docx, etc.) are open standards.
Oh.
Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.
This. My wife is a math teacher, and the piss-poor experience of writing mathematical notation outside of MS Word keeps them stuck on Word. As much as she and I love LaTeX's math notation, she can't get her departmentmates onboard with that kind of syntax. They need to maintain notes, guides, tests, quizzes, etc. and basically running a team OneDrive is really the only option because all the alternatives utterly fail…
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AsciiDoc has a serious adoption problem compared to MarkDown.
Why is that? Given the comparatively low quality of Markdown (as a language), isn't GitHub the only reason why Markdown gets pushed so much? If GitHub chose AsciiDoc instead of Markdown as their base, we would be in a better position now.
Markdown stresses ease of readability. I don't find the language low quality at all, just limited. Limited isn't necessarily bad, depending on its purpose.
> isn't GitHub the only reason why Markdown gets pushed so much?
Reddit's use seems to significantly predate Github, and I would say reaches a far greater audience. Unique users visiting in April 2017 is 1.285 billion[1]. Some fraction of that is probably unique people (given anonymous desktop and mobile usage), but given how large the number is, I imagine it's still a very large number.
> If GitHub chose AsciiDoc instead of Markdown as their base, we would be in a better position now.
I agree that Github would be in a better place now, but I don't think that would really have changed anything for anyone else. Even if you want to make a case that Github would have influenced programmers who would have then used it in other projects, I think you need to account for Stack Overflow also. I think it was arguably much more popular and used by a far wider audience than Github for a long time (and may still be, I'm not sure).
Markdown was used widely because it was simple, and users would actually bother to learn and remember the very few options they had. People are more used to it now, and at this point, sure, they might accept something more complex (especially if it built on the rules they already internalized), but I don't think we can blindly assume they would have accepted something more complex.
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/443332/reddit-monthly-vi...
Edit: s/Unique IPs/Unique users/
Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method. Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method. Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method. Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted. Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads. Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels. Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn…
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PDFs are still ok though. There are many implementations of PDF parsers, many Open Source. It may not be as "universal" as plain-text, but it is definitely universal. At this point, I believe that all major operating systems ship with the ability to open PDFs for display.
PDFs seem to render poorly on ebook readers.
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PDFs are still ok though. There are many implementations of PDF parsers, many Open Source. It may not be as "universal" as plain-text, but it is definitely universal. At this point, I believe that all major operating systems ship with the ability to open PDFs for display.
PDFs presume that the writer has "control" rather than the reader. Actually I probably shouldn't put quotes around "control" -- formatting is rigidly constrained, on purpose. In addition PDF adapts, by design, a model of paper to the web. It's a "horseless carriage" file format. Font size, page width, cut/paste and presentation in general should be the reader's choice, not the writer's. The Web manages this, sort of.…
Sometimes. There are a lot more design options available if the creator of the content maintains control over layout, fonts, etc. Sometimes this doesn't matter--if it's a block of text for example. Fairly simple layouts also render pretty well on the web.
Different content works better or worse with different approaches. One isn't intrinsically superior.
Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method. Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method. Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method. Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted. Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads. Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels. Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn…
Plain text: so when Optik.io melts down immediately from an HN "hug of death" one can use high-availability services instead.
But as evidenced by this and other articles, as everyone is getting fed up with the current state of data, people are coming around to the idea.
Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.