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The future of education is plain text

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Re: The future of education is plain text

#191

Post by JoshMnem »

tangue wrote: post #69
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #46

Plaintext certainly seems more attractive the more docs I write. Over the years, with both work and personal projects, I've used every format from: - Notepad - Microsoft Word - PDF - Twiki - Various proprietary WSYWIG that compiles to HTML - JIRA - Raw HTML - Markdown (several flavors) With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the co…

Did you try org files ? Even if you're not into Emacs it might worth the try reading your needs

Org mode format is great. Pandoc works with all of those formats, including org mode.

http://pandoc.org/

Re: The future of education is plain text

#192

Post by nobodyorother »

TuringTest wrote: post #36
emodendroket wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The specification is inadequate to imitate Office" is a different claim from "it only exists as a proprietary, closed format."

From what I've heard, the MS Office applications do not even entirely comply with the published specification. So OOXML is still not a definition of the format with which PowerPoint stores its files.

The spec isn't actually self-consistent, so it's not clear that it can ever actually be implemented:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080328090328998

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?stor...

Re: The future of education is plain text

#193

Post by tscs37 »

gkya wrote: post #169
chongli wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unless you work alone. When you work with other people, it's important to use a common format for the benefit of the group. Trying to force other people to use emacs won't win you any friends.

Org exports to anything including utf8 plain text with a nice style reminiscent of IEEE RFCs.

Without using Emacs Org-mode however, you're stuck with something that only you can properly enjoy and edit, so everyone who doesn't like Emacs is SOL.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#194

Post by JohnHammersley »

Pxtl wrote: post #25
krapht wrote: post #2

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…

Something Overleaf [1] might help -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor with a rich text mode [2] to help make it easier for non-LaTeX users to collaborate on LaTeX docs. If you do use it, feedback would be appreciated -- I'm one of the founders :)

We also published a short post on 'the stoic resilience of the PDF within the digital ecosystem' recently [3], which seems relevant...although it's just a short background piece.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/509

Re: The future of education is plain text

#195

Post by JohnHammersley »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #46

Plaintext certainly seems more attractive the more docs I write. Over the years, with both work and personal projects, I've used every format from: - Notepad - Microsoft Word - PDF - Twiki - Various proprietary WSYWIG that compiles to HTML - JIRA - Raw HTML - Markdown (several flavors) With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the co…

If you're interested in adding LaTeX to that list, you might like to try Overleaf [1] -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor we built to try to lower the learning curve (I'm one of the founders).

It includes a rich text mode for easier collaboration with non-LaTeX users [2], and you can also write in Markdown if you like :) [3].

Feedback always appreciated if you do give it a try, thanks.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501

Re: The future of education is plain text

#196

Post by coldtea »

gkya wrote: post #166
coldtea wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the compiled ones require several hours of changing syntax, image locations, etc. And plain text is itself a nightmare to parse and do anything beyond reading it as a block.

How is it harder to parse than a PDF or a docx?

I mean compared to structured file formats like JSON, YAML, TOML, XML and whatever (including binary such).

Obviously it's not harder to parse than a PDF.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#197

Post by zo1 »

gkya wrote: post #166
coldtea wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the compiled ones require several hours of changing syntax, image locations, etc. And plain text is itself a nightmare to parse and do anything beyond reading it as a block.

How is it harder to parse than a PDF or a docx?

I'd argue that it's hard to parse because it's so open-ended. E.g. Markdown is only one example of how to structure textual data in plain-text with additional "syntax".

Imagine it wasn't decided on Markdown. E.g.: I don't use markdown when making plain-text notes. I make it all hierarchical and indent using "- ". I.e. headings are top-level, sub-headings are indented by one, and so on. Eventually, you realize that all things can be represented as just lists of nested lists. No need for some arbitrary "heading" type, just nest it all based on the concept.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#198

Post by Dangeranger »

Dangeranger wrote: post #96

Plaintext OrgMode notebooks exhibit every benefit listed in Minimaxir's [0] post, and have the additional advantage of powerful editor integration beyond R code. Here is an example of using the IPython kernel to evaluate inline Python code within an OrgMode document.[1][2] More information on how to create multi-language notebooks with OrgMode Babel here[3] [0] http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/ [1] http://kit…

There is an open source Javascript package for OrgMode file parsing and converting here[0]

Example demo javascript webapp[1]

Orgmode Vim[2]

OrgMode IntelliJ [3]

OrgMode Atom [4]

OrgMode Sublime [5]

OrgMode VSCode [6]

[0] https://github.com/mooz/org-js

[1] http://mooz.github.io/org-js/

[2] https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode

[3] https://github.com/skuro/org4idea

[4] https://atom.io/packages/organized

[5] https://github.com/danielmagnussons/orgmode

[6] https://github.com/jsonreeder/vscode-org-mode

Re: The future of education is plain text

#199

Post by confounded »

analog31 wrote: post #170
confounded wrote: post #154

It seems worth mentioning that plaintext is discussed here as the storage / source format. That doesn't mean it has to be the distribution / consumption format. One of the great things about something like Markdown is that it can be rendered to HTML trivially, to display video, equations, etc. Same thing for ebooks, PDFs, whatever (thanks Pandoc!). It's also easy to translate between formats (e.g. .md, .org, .rst, et…

A thought occurs to me about source versus consumption formats. It would seem to me that source code should be the distribution format. That way, the recipient can choose their own preferred consumption format. When I first heard about HTML, described in some magazine article, it was touted as a way to give people a chance to have their own unique readers. For instance, a blind person might want to have their own HTM…

Multiple formats can be available for distribution. I think that web pages make a sensible default, but having the option to take an ebook and whack it on an e-reader, or open the source in an editor (e.g. to run code snippets yourself) is great.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#200

Post by kbenson »

fao_ wrote: post #188
kbenson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the comparatively low quality of Markdown (as a language) 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 20…

You act as if AsciiDoc is difficult to learn. It seems mostly equivalent to Markdown, just nicer in a lot of small ways

AsciiDoc is much more complex, in that it supports many more things. Check out the user guide[1]. Markdown takes a couple paragraphs to describe. You can know everything there is to know about using markdown within a couple minutes at most.

1: http://asciidoc.org/userguide.html

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