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Write plain text files

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Re: Write plain text files

#171

Post by copperx »

Seirdy wrote: post #46
imgabe wrote: post #35

Another advantage to plain text files: source control. You can check your writing into git and get a history of all your edits. It’s something programmers take for granted, but it would be amazing if this got more widely adopted outside of tech. The number of files with names like “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” is truly staggering. “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Yeah, in high school I and another student did our essay peer reviews using annotated diffs once. It was so much easier than Google Docs, since we didn't have to leave our editors. Wrapping version control with a non-tech-friendly porcelain could help a lot of people escape user domestication from vendor lock-in.

I don't care how much porcelain you add. Using git effectively beyond add and commit requires undestanding quite a few concepts. Mass adoption of git in the consumer space ain't happening anytime soon.

Re: Write plain text files

#172

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

loudmax wrote: post #68
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily. AIUI, git is already prepared to be that, it just needs diff programs that can handle whatever format. I mean, other than git's interface being its own impediment to non-technical users.

"Report Final Final draft v3.docx" is in a proprietary format format controlled by a single company. The spec may be open in some sense, but it's far from a level playing field.

Right, but if that company released a diff tool for docx (or someone reverse engineered one), git would work with it. I don't expect that to happen, I'm just saying git isn't the limiting factor.

Re: Write plain text files

#173

Post by prashantsengar »

rattray wrote: post #141
prashantsengar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Athens Research? [0] It is open source and everything is stored locally but not in markdown files. You can self-host the desktop app to share notes. [0]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

That doesn't seem designed for growing teams – for example, it doesn't seem to have comments.

They are still in beta currently, focusing on small teams right now so there is hope for comments.

Re: Write plain text files

#174

Post by slmjkdbtl »

I've been using simplenote and kinda wanted to transition to plain text, the only thing stopping me is the mobile desktop sync workflow which simplenote handles really nicely. Does anyone have any good ideas?

Re: Write plain text files

#175

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

D13Fd wrote: post #154
imgabe wrote: post #35

Another advantage to plain text files: source control. You can check your writing into git and get a history of all your edits. It’s something programmers take for granted, but it would be amazing if this got more widely adopted outside of tech. The number of files with names like “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” is truly staggering. “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Honestly I think modern Sharepoint/OneDrive based .docx files have already leapfrogged git for the average user. In an office environment, modern MS Word gives you a really nice version history, with automatic or manual/named versions, plus multi-user simultaneous editing, with a slick and fast UI. It’s even cross platform - I send a coworker a link to a document, and they can open it and work on Word for Windows whi…

After not using Word for years we've been using it for a few months now for a project, expecting it would be decent.

While some of the ideas are great, the overall experience was pretty bad. Leaving autosave on often slowed down Word to an unworkable pace and after a few other issues (I'm not exactly sure what, wasn't involved) we just made sure only one person at a time works on the document.

Some other annoying small issues I experienced: when working together sometimes your undo history is gone. I guess that's because someone else edited too and correctly undoing something someone else edited in between is not simple. IMO it's impossible and any system doing merges automatically will fall apart at some point.

Track edits cannot track deleting rows of a table

Wed based word works actually pretty fine, but it misses random features. Adding captions seems not to be supported.

Re: Write plain text files

#176

Post by nofunsir »

RBouschery wrote: post #167

Not quite plain text files, but... I've used them all - Notion, Roam, [insert any hyped app of the past 10 years here] - but then in the end, when a random thought pops up that I want to write down I always land back in Apple Notes..

Ah... good ol' ClarisWorks.

Re: Write plain text files

#177

Post by account-5 »

Zim-Wiki is my go-to as it pretty much manages everything for you.

It mentions an advantage of not fiddling with formatting but I constantly switch between wiki markup, markdown, and even ini format; I can't help it.

Re: Write plain text files

#178

Post by [deleted] »

IceWreck wrote: post #152
yarky wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually surprised : last time I used Git Bash on Windows it did work quite well with .docx files. Then I switched jobs to avoid touching .docx files ... The best alternative I've found to generate .docx output is R markdown, which uses pandoc under the hood and let's you program the whole document the way LaTeX would.

Isnt docx binary ? So git is storing a new version of the file every commit. That way too much storage space youre wasting.

[deleted]

Re: Write plain text files

#179

Post by nextlevelwizard »

But author is not writing plain text files.

As he shows at the end he is clearly writing some mixture of HTML and some custom language that he uses to parse title, tags, and date.

I do agree that unless absolutely needed you shouldn't tie yourself to proprietary formats, but unless you are writing simple notes you probably want more functionality out of your files than actual plain text file can provide at which point you should instead use markdown.

Re: Write plain text files

#180

Post by jsmith99 »

D13Fd wrote: post #154
imgabe wrote: post #35

Another advantage to plain text files: source control. You can check your writing into git and get a history of all your edits. It’s something programmers take for granted, but it would be amazing if this got more widely adopted outside of tech. The number of files with names like “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” is truly staggering. “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Honestly I think modern Sharepoint/OneDrive based .docx files have already leapfrogged git for the average user. In an office environment, modern MS Word gives you a really nice version history, with automatic or manual/named versions, plus multi-user simultaneous editing, with a slick and fast UI. It’s even cross platform - I send a coworker a link to a document, and they can open it and work on Word for Windows whi…

Word also includes a nice GUI diffing tool for docx files. It's possible to make git diff use it using something like https://github.com/ForNeVeR/ExtDiff
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