Words have meaning
Prose are Powerful
Write plain text files
21–30 of 425 posts
Re: Write plain text files
#22Is there a modern text editor that only supports ASCII, so I can take my plain text notes and store pages and pages of them in one or two KB?
Most of them should have an ANSI setting. It might be stashed as an option in the save dialog. If space is really an issue, zip them. Plain text always compresses wonderfully.
Re: Write plain text files
#23Is there a modern text editor that only supports ASCII, so I can take my plain text notes and store pages and pages of them in one or two KB?
One nice alternative is a clipboard widget for your OS that strips formatting and other stuff out. I use "PureText" on windows to remove formatting and it works great for me for many things, though it only strips rich text formatting.
Re: Write plain text files
#24I had a quick back-and-forth with Derek on HN a few weeks ago about applying this philosophy to a personal CRM system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329475#30334269
Re: Write plain text files
#25I've tried a lot of different things over decades. And, after countless experimentation, I'm still at the same place... I store data all over the place. I have Evernote for long book notes and tracking financial data. I'm using notion right now as my base of notes for learning how to build a cabin (toggles and embedding videos is wonderful). I tried to really use roam and its off-shots for a while but could never rea…
Do you know https://obsidian.md/ ? It's a note taking app with plugins. There are some for todos and excalidraw for drawing on whiteboards.
I'm a Joplin user but I've been slowly learning Obsidian too. Level1Techs [0] did a fantastic primer on Obsidian and gave a thoughtful reflection on the zettelkastan method [1]. Josh Duffney's youtube channel [2] on Obsidian is also worth the watch too.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69tRdemJiM
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCV1T7JbfzbE2O7P3kydmKw/vid...
Re: Write plain text files
#26I really like obsidian for writing text files. Technically they're markdown, but I almost never look at them as markdown files.
Re: Write plain text files
#27This is one of the main strengths of Obsidian, which I have been using lately and I’m extremely happy with: everything is just Markdown files in some folder on disk. Zero danger of lock in. You can have a disk hierarchy if you desire, or trust that search will find you what you are looking for. For me search works fairly well and if I need something extra I can just grep/sed/awk. Plus it has the features that a simpl…
Been using obsidian for two weeks and the tagging / linking to documents is top notch, saving it to my internet drive at work brings out the best of all worlds
Re: Write plain text files
#28I tend to go for (simple) markdown rather than pure text files. It can be rendered into some fancy format, but the source code is also readable to humans. With chat apps like Slack and Discord taking it up, even non-technical people tend to understand what it means to put emphasis on something. You get the benefits of plain text with the ability to empathise, without fancy formats. Such a format also enforces paragra…
This is my experience as well. I admire anyone that goes full .txt but I missed how easily markdown allows me to hierarchically organize my thoughts via headings and sub-headings.
Re: Write plain text files
#29My amusing anecdote is that I've pretty much settled on Markdown, but I'm still struggling to completely wean myself of the habit of constantly looking at the rendered output alongside the text source. My entire work group is OK with Markdown now, and even the managers don't care any more. I wonder if the lockdown has resulted in communication being less formal overall.
Re: Write plain text files
#30This is one of the main strengths of Obsidian, which I have been using lately and I’m extremely happy with: everything is just Markdown files in some folder on disk. Zero danger of lock in. You can have a disk hierarchy if you desire, or trust that search will find you what you are looking for. For me search works fairly well and if I need something extra I can just grep/sed/awk. Plus it has the features that a simpl…
I use org-mode the same way. I have a flat directory with many small files, inspired by Zettelkasten and by simple wikis. No server, no dependencies.
This also works well for small organizations. Both GitHub and GitLab are able to render org files, with some minor limitations. Hence, a simple repository full of org files is already a wiki. Even local links just work, with zero dependencies.
It's possible to transform org files into HTML with some CI task to get support for all org features. But I have found this a bit of an overkill. I don't need most org features. The basics are already great: outlines, timestamps, hyperlinks, tables and footnotes.
You can achieve more or less the same things with Markdown as well.