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Write plain text files

sive.rs

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Re: Write plain text files

#211

Post by xenodium »

Plain text adoption often implies markdown for a richer experience, but we also have the wonderful https://orgmode.org markup.

There is no shortage of markdown-based tools on all platforms. Our org markup options, on the other hand, are very few outside of Emacs. Org markup itself is super versatile and can power lots of use-cases.

I built two org-powered apps for iOS myself:

https://plainorg.com

https://flathabits.com

There are other great ones out there:

https://beorg.app

https://logseq.com

https://organice.200ok.ch

https://orgro.org

http://orgzly.com

Lastly, a shoutout to Karl Voit who's been driving org markup awareness outside of Emacs with Orgdown https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown. He's also discussed org markup's strengths at https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only

Re: Write plain text files

#212

Post by Singletoned »

I hate to be pedantic[1], but:

> HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text.

On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files.

> Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text.

This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, or utf-8, and still potentially has problems being read on other machines.

It's reasonable to say that ascii has become so ubiquitous as to be universal, but it definitely wasn't always so, and won't definitely always be.

[1] Okay, I love to be pedantic

Re: Write plain text files

#213

Post by senko »

Singletoned wrote: post #212

I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. > Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text. This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, o…

You can't be pedantic and then say Word and Excel are files. They're applications.

On a more serious note, ascii and nowadays utf8 are customarily considered plain text, the fact that a specific charset is used doesn't mean it's not text.

Re: Write plain text files

#214

Post by sgjohnson »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #172
loudmax wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Pre-commit hook to convert to plaintext or markdown[0].

And there you go, a human readable diff.

[0]https://github.com/benbalter/word-to-markdown

Re: Write plain text files

#216

Post by usrbinbash »

Singletoned wrote: post #212

I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. > Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text. This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, o…

> that there's no such thing as "plain text"

Please show me a computing device that cannot deal with ASCII.

And UTF-8 has, by now, reached a level of ubiquity that encompasses almost everything in IT as well.

Re: Write plain text files

#217

Post by urlwolf »

xenodium wrote: post #211

Plain text adoption often implies markdown for a richer experience, but we also have the wonderful https://orgmode.org markup. There is no shortage of markdown-based tools on all platforms. Our org markup options, on the other hand, are very few outside of Emacs. Org markup itself is super versatile and can power lots of use-cases. I built two org-powered apps for iOS myself: https://plainorg.com https://flathabits.c…

Don't forget asciidoc. Coherent, has markup for things like video etc. It's a superior format to markdown, a pity it's so unknown

Re: Write plain text files

#218

Post by pubby »

usrbinbash wrote: post #216
Singletoned wrote: post #212

I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. > Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text. This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, o…

> that there's no such thing as "plain text" Please show me a computing device that cannot deal with ASCII. And UTF-8 has, by now, reached a level of ubiquity that encompasses almost everything in IT as well.

There's still EBCDIC systems being used.

Re: Write plain text files

#219

Post by nly »

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.

It works well if the text format in question is line oriented, otherwise it doesn't.

Re: Write plain text files

#220

Post by mro_name »

usrbinbash wrote: post #216
Singletoned wrote: post #212

I hate to be pedantic[1], but: > HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text. On this definition, Word and Excel are just (zipped) plain text files. > Every device, including ones long gone, and ones not invented yet, can read and edit plain text. This definitely isn't true, and it kind of misses the point that there's no such thing as "plain text". It's still encoded in ascii, o…

> that there's no such thing as "plain text" Please show me a computing device that cannot deal with ASCII. And UTF-8 has, by now, reached a level of ubiquity that encompasses almost everything in IT as well.

indeed, why not use real plain text – not markdown.

Homer was able to write the fall of troy and Shakespeare Hamlet without bold text.

So what can't one express without?

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