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Write plain text files

sive.rs

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Re: Write plain text files

#51

Post by cytzol »

elteto wrote: post #20

This 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…

Serious question: how do you square your third paragraph with your first? That is, if you're using Obsidian's features like [[square bracket link syntax]], or #tags, or inline images, aren't you effectively locked in to editors that support the same set of features?

Re: Write plain text files

#53

Post by tdhz77 »

_ofdw wrote: post #42
chrisweekly wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Markdown isn't an alternative." Strongest possible respectful disagreement. --- ^ orig comment above, edits below (I was interrupted when 1st commenting; apologies to anyone who responded to the short version) --- See eg Obsidian ( https://obsidian.md ) for a great example. It's astonishing how feature-rich it's become. WYSIWYG editor, Excalidraw integration, Slid.es, etc etc etc. And if you have any webdev chops at…

Markdown is actually awful. There's at least 3 different dialects that are all called Markdown, so if you want your text rendered it's a toss-up as to whether or not it'll look how you intend. I think that Markdown's success is due to a lack of a widely-used, simple alternative that's well-specified. Org is easily and objectively the best markup but of course it's only very very recently that there was a non-emacs im…

Most of these differences are managed rather easy.

Re: Write plain text files

#54

Post by ddulaney »

chrisweekly wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #34

>If you rely on Word, Evernote or Notion, for example, then you can’t work unless you have Word, Evernote, or Notion. You are helpless without them. You are dependent. Although I deliberately avoid Evernote and Notion for those stated reasons, I'm fine with Microsoft Word. I've been using it for 20 years. It even opens my proprietary DOS WordPerfect ("*.wp") files from 1980s! Sometimes I need more flexible layout of…

"Markdown isn't an alternative." Strongest possible respectful disagreement. --- ^ orig comment above, edits below (I was interrupted when 1st commenting; apologies to anyone who responded to the short version) --- See eg Obsidian ( https://obsidian.md ) for a great example. It's astonishing how feature-rich it's become. WYSIWYG editor, Excalidraw integration, Slid.es, etc etc etc. And if you have any webdev chops at…

> Sometimes I need more flexible layout of fonts and graphics

That’s the key. For much of my writing, all I need is text with a little formatting, and markdown is great for that as a user. (It’s less nice if you’re writing a parser, but that hasn’t come up for me yet :) )

For some of my writing I need professional-grade layout. There I either use LaTeX directly, or I use pandoc then LaTeX.

But sometimes I need to:

- Include images that don’t have a public URL

- Use more than one font

- Have a recipient be able to edit the document

- And the recipient isn’t a developer

Markdown doesn’t check all of those boxes. Word files do (as do Google Docs links, ODF files, and some others).

Markdown is great, but it’s not enough all of the time.

Re: Write plain text files

#55

Post by sgallant »

I'm a big believer in this, but I use https://bear.app/. It supports the Markdown format and can export to .md files, but it uses SQLite under the hood, I believe.

What's amazing about this is that your thought archive is now searchable (which is fast in bear).

Re: Write plain text files

#56

Post by Temporal_Trout »

elteto wrote: post #20

This 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…

Obsidian is great. I use Syncthing to share my "database" between all my devices. I can do some quick edits/take notes on the go and when I get home the changes are already mirrored to my desktop.

Re: Write plain text files

#58

Post by sylens »

elteto wrote: post #20

This 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…

This is exactly why I switched to Obsidian after trying a few others like Bear, Notion, and Craft. Let me see the files on disk! Don't abstract it away or hide it from me.

Re: Write plain text files

#59

Post by justsomeuser »

What about PDF/A?

Considering that every browser, OS and printer has a reader implementation, and there is a spec defined, surely this makes it on par with plain text?

You could use any document editor (Word, Pages, Apple Notes etc), and as long as it can export to PDF you are no longer tied to the note taking companies proprietary software for reading and writing. Future indexing systems will surely support PDF.

Re: Write plain text files

#60

Post by glacials »

Real question: what is the use case for viewing notes from 30 years ago?

Things that come to mind are evidence in a court of law and having fun looking back on old memories, neither of which seems worth the sometimes incredible amount of trouble.

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