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The Plain Text Project

plaintextproject.online

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Re: The Plain Text Project

#91

Post by reggieband »

When I'm not using a custom tool I tend to fallback on two (or three) alternatives:

* Markdown-ish in a text editor

* Google Doc

* Google Sheets

The first is for any quick notes I need to take or anything that might turn into a code checkin, confluence page, etc. The second is for anything I think I'll have to share and may want collaborators. The third is for almost everything else.

I feel I disagree with a lot of people in the rest of the comments. I think plain text in general is a major pain to deal with. I recall several years ago having to deal with CSV parsing and I was aghast at how complicated that is to get "correct". Give me highly structured data formats please. I'll take yaml, toml, JSON or even XML over CSV, TSV or plain text at pretty much every opportunity.

Re: The Plain Text Project

#92

Post by imjasonmiller »

keyle wrote: post #61
BMorearty wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea. The JetBrains family of IDEs (RubyMine, IntelliJ, etc.) even have this as a built-in TODO panel that shows files with TODO and FIXME comments (syntax is configurable).

I use IntelliJ as well for years, but don't underestimate grep -r "# TODO" .

That’s great! Using ripgrep [1], I think it would even exclude all from your .gitignore by default.

I’ll give this a try before adding something to my .vimrc again.

1. https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Re: The Plain Text Project

#93

Post by sevencolors »

mntmoss wrote: post #33

Recently I decided that I was going to solve the problem of: I easily write inline TODO comments while I work on code, but then have difficulty keeping track of them and getting my head back into the state of things later. While there is IDE support for such things, it's usually not exactly the right interface I want. So I made a tiny CLI app that scans the source for TODO and FIXME lines and presents a menu of files…

There's extension for VS Code - Todo Tree that organizes your files with TODO in the comments. Super helpful

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfug...

Re: The Plain Text Project

#94

Post by gnud »

reggieband wrote: post #91

When I'm not using a custom tool I tend to fallback on two (or three) alternatives: * Markdown-ish in a text editor * Google Doc * Google Sheets The first is for any quick notes I need to take or anything that might turn into a code checkin, confluence page, etc. The second is for anything I think I'll have to share and may want collaborators. The third is for almost everything else. I feel I disagree with a lot of p…

CSV is fairly OK if you just ignore Excel. Unfortunately, if you're working with others, they won't let you ignore Excel.

Re: The Plain Text Project

#95

Post by erikbye »

Emendo wrote: post #44

Plain text is great when I am on my laptop, but not as well as soon as I want to, for example, check or update my todo list on OneDrive/Google Drive on my phone or on my work computer. I have found myself moving back into proprietary formats like docx and xlsx because of the above. All I want is a folder full of markdown files (and other files that need to stay in their original format), but I not could find a way to…

I use Joplin, it uses markdown so I have my folder of files I can grep. It also has a mobile app and you can set up syncing with WebDAV, I use Seafile.

Re: The Plain Text Project

#96

Post by sb057 »

jahbrewski wrote: post #7

I really feel like this site should be in plain text.

It purports to be, even though it isn't:

>Believe it or not, plain text is used everywhere. Even when you don’t see it. Where? In the source code for software, web pages, blog posts and articles (like this one), configuration files on your computer, and more.

https://plaintextproject.online/2017/07/11/matters.html

Re: The Plain Text Project

#97

Post by sb057 »

hinkley wrote: post #16
jahbrewski wrote: post #7

I really feel like this site should be in plain text.

All I see is text and a few links. Are you claiming that typesetting doesn’t count as plain text? If so then what do you call books?

>Formatted text, styled text, or rich text, as opposed to plain text, has styling information beyond the minimum of semantic elements: colours, styles (boldface, italic), sizes, and special features in HTML (such as hyperlinks).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formatted_text

Re: The Plain Text Project

#98

Post by bhl »

nixpulvis wrote: post #51
Emendo wrote: post #44

Plain text is great when I am on my laptop, but not as well as soon as I want to, for example, check or update my todo list on OneDrive/Google Drive on my phone or on my work computer. I have found myself moving back into proprietary formats like docx and xlsx because of the above. All I want is a folder full of markdown files (and other files that need to stay in their original format), but I not could find a way to…

Seems like there should be an app that serves as an editor for you well enough. The syncing problem is only a problem because Apple (I'm assuming your on iOS, and I don't know as much about android) doesn't give you a fucking filesystem. I'd be pretty happy with something like ViMobile, and `git push` personally.

What about the native files app? Right now it seems Bear is using it.

Re: The Plain Text Project

#99

Post by bhl »

coldtea wrote: post #54
goerz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems odd... at least on iOS, aren’t there a million markdown editors? What problem did you run in to?

That editing text files on mobile sucks, whereas selecting a date with the date selector, toggling an item as done with a checkbox click etc are much better...

That just seems a limitation of mobile keyboards: there’s no arrow keys so markdown editors lack navigation. One benefit of iOS is that if you hold the space key down it allows you to freely move your cursor around.

Re: The Plain Text Project

#100

Post by OkGoDoIt »

loh wrote: post #42
solipsism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical any such trend exists. Are you sure you're not misinterpreting your anecdotal experience? I'm not sure if it's a result of the fact that most people are tech savvy Most people aren't tech savvy. Again, maybe you are extrapolating inappropriately from your personal experiences, the people you hang out with, etc?

I'm mostly referring to the younger generation(s) and the apps most widely used by them. Think of the simplicity of applications like Instagram and Snapchat. There isn't much to the interfaces for most user interaction - some images, videos, text, an input or two, and a few buttons. There may be some advanced touch interactions (pinching and swiping), but overall, applications these days tend to be relatively simple.…

I find Snapchat to be a confusing and complex app. It’s very hard to figure out how to do what you want unless someone shows you. The UI doesn’t have any discoverability. Many actions are hidden behind non-obvious gestures. Lake many apps nowadays, it gives the illusion of simplicity by just not having adequate UI.

On a related note, I absolutely hate how most mobile and many web and desktop-based apps nowadays don’t have tooltips, so I can’t figure out what some inscrutable icon/button is supposed to do by hovering my mouse on it or long pressing my finger on it. This used to be table stakes.

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