My boss used to write emails in Word and email those as attachments.
Write plain text files
81–90 of 425 posts
Re: Write plain text files
#82I think plain files are great but really I take notes from far too many places and I want to take notes alongside my browsing. Most of what I write is always in response to something but its a response I don't want public. It's a weird zone to be in.
If anyone is looking for a note taking app that's pretty brain dead simple, I made one. This is really more about note taking on websites rather than general note taking. I also like to think by focusing on just the notes and making it feature complete at this point means that it will last for a long time.
One thing I tried to do was make sure everything is exportable and that backups are on you to maintain. This way the data is always in your hands even when its in mine.
Maybe because I'm in the echo chamber but it feels like everyone's looking for some sort of knowledge base system to use. Is this something only devs care about or is everyone on the planet trying to keep their thoughts on hand.
Re: Write plain text files
#83I do exactly this. http://len.falken.directory
Extremely relevant: http://len.falken.directory/misc/writing-for-the-internet-ac...
Re: Write plain text files
#84Perhaps I’m too young, but I don’t find most of my writing relevant years later. Amusing maybe. So I don’t worry too much about the current platform I’m using being obsolete. I do want the ability to back up to plaintext with a single click though. And I do stick close to plaintext for its focus. Bear is the best compromise so far.
Re: Write plain text files
#85Perhaps I’m too young, but I don’t find most of my writing relevant years later. Amusing maybe. So I don’t worry too much about the current platform I’m using being obsolete. I do want the ability to back up to plaintext with a single click though. And I do stick close to plaintext for its focus. Bear is the best compromise so far.
As you age, your memory deteriorates and you have more experiences to store in it.
I have been keeping daily notes on my work for about 8 years. It's really really really nice for cases where someone asks me something about a customer or technology or solution to a problem and I'm able to pull it up with a quick search.
Re: Write plain text files
#86What 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.
PDF is explicitly designed as a final output format (and PDF/A is explicitly designed for archival purposes). They're good for that purpose, but it's literally like storing the digital version of a printed copy of a document rather than the source. That's fine if your only goal is preservation for reading, but preservation in a format that can be edited, converted, transformed, etc., lets out PDF as a target.
Re: Write plain text files
#87I use plain text because there is no multimedia equivalent that is universal and end-user controlled, and there are no multimedia equivalents to Vim, Grep, regex, etc. Text is great, but an image, table, or diagram are sometimes irreplaceable. We think we are great innovators, but we are stuck in 1990. Notice also that there are no Vim-equivalents for phones, even though that platform has been widely used for 15+ yea…
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Re: Write plain text files
#88I'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…
Everyone was talking about Roam for a while, I wonder what happened.
Roam costs money; Obsidian is free.
Re: Write plain text files
#89Joplin has a wysiwyg editor that stores the actual data as markdown, I like that feature.
Re: Write plain text files
#90I use plain text because there is no multimedia equivalent that is universal and end-user controlled, and there are no multimedia equivalents to Vim, Grep, regex, etc. Text is great, but an image, table, or diagram are sometimes irreplaceable. We think we are great innovators, but we are stuck in 1990. Notice also that there are no Vim-equivalents for phones, even though that platform has been widely used for 15+ yea…
There are plenty of text editors for phones; many of them cost very little. I don't find iVim very useful on a touch screen, but that's probably just me.