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Write plain text files

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Re: Write plain text files

#191

Post by jandinter »

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.

> “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Worked on a “Git for Word” project [1], which is currently on hold.

The diff part was manageable, though not trivial to get diffs that make sense for prose/regular text.

The hard parts are UX/UI (making Git concepts transparent to “normal” users) and merging. Yet without automatic merging, branching is not very convenient.

Would love to collaborate on this in the future again. Reach out if you are working in this space, happy to share.

[1] https://julesdocs.com

Re: Write plain text files

#192

Post by lottin »

I also use sc (spreadsheet calculator), a terminal-based spreadsheet program which uses a plain text file format. Very convenient for dealing with tabular or numerical data, which would be cumbersome to work with on a textual file.

Re: Write plain text files

#193

Post by TuringTest »

yarky wrote: post #47
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.

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.

> The best alternative I've found to generate .docx output is R markdown

I do the same with markdown in Zettlr, which has a nice inline-preview format and can be used by my non-tech partners.

The generated .docx has a limited range of styles, but we see that as an advantage.

Re: Write plain text files

#196

Post by nxpnsv »

lottin wrote: post #192

I also use sc (spreadsheet calculator), a terminal-based spreadsheet program which uses a plain text file format. Very convenient for dealing with tabular or numerical data, which would be cumbersome to work with on a textual file.

Last stable release for sc was 19 years ago (according to wikipedia). I guess it is perfect already :D

Re: Write plain text files

#197

Post by cryptos »

I've lost some old documents due to missing support of old file formats. I guess it would be possible to find some converters, but then again I'm too lazy to perform research on this topic, it is just like I'd like to look in one of those old documents from time to time (more personal history than actually important). So I tend to agreee with the approach of keeping things simple.

However using a note taking app that operates on plaintext (markdown) files like Joplin could be a good middle ground.

Re: Write plain text files

#198

Post by thrwawy283 »

jsmith99 wrote: post #180
D13Fd wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you for sharing this. I had no idea it existed! I was getting pandoc cleared at my work, but for the Windows environment that it is, this is another solution :)

Re: Write plain text files

#199

Post by thrwawy283 »

copperx wrote: post #169
thrwawy283 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Agree entirely. I love some of the collaborative nature of Microsoft Teams and CRDT editing Word/Excel, but I'm usually pretty remote. Text over a tenuous WAN connection is ideal. I work at a government agency and I was /just today/ getting them to review and approve Git and VS Code for our staff use - and pandoc. A couple years ago we never would have gotten open-source software approved. I wish I knew of an e…

I love pandoc and git and writing text files, but oh my, unless the users in your organization are tech savvy, your scenario sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Admittedly, if there's any chance to this I think it will start with tech-savvy assistants helping to preserve documents on the backend of things. When a process takes hold budgets usually get restructured and a dedicated application is contracted around the existing process or data. I'm at minimum trying to prove the value of strict version control in my space :)

Re: Write plain text files

#200

Post by approxim8ion »

_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…

I get that Markdown is expected to be rendered into HTML eventually, but I find the syntax useful in its raw form too, just for formatting text files.
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