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Write plain text files

sive.rs

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Re: Write plain text files

#231

Post by nextlevelwizard »

sdoering wrote: post #187
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #179

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 poin…

Code I write, be it python, php, HTML or JS is still plain text as a format. I can open any of these code documents in any dumb text editor. The fact that some other tool can do more with these files, parse them, execute them, "extract" some logic from them isn't relevant to the fact that I can open, read and edit these files as a pure and plain text file. Therefore adding parsable parts/logic to files like YAML head…

Then the whole article loses all of its meaning. If you find yourself writing Python in Word something has gone so horribly wrong there is no saving you.

Just use the good old file program and you'll see that in any coherent world we classify python, php, html, and js files as different from actual plain text files.

This very much feels like you are trying to argue tea is same as plain water.

Re: Write plain text files

#232

Post by nextlevelwizard »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #202
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #179

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 poin…

I personally use literal plain text for note taking. Previously I used One Note and other stuff, but when I saw how I just store plain text there I grew suspicious that something isn't right and indeed couldn't find a reason why it can't be text files in my text editor. In addition to that my text editor already has best text rendering settings I spent time tuning, and text editing functionality I'm used to - that's…

Markdown adds support for more formatting options, but biggest are links and images.

Re: Write plain text files

#233

Post by severak_cz »

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…

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

but this is true only for newer versions. In older versions it was binary salad derived from C's data model.

And even in new versions these are far from files you can safely edit by hand.

Re: Write plain text files

#234

Post by zelphirkalt »

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…

When plain text is zipped, it is no longer plain text and as such it does not take advantage of all the things that can be done with simple text files, unless there is additional tooling, which again unzips the zipped files. This creates some friction of course. General tools do not bother with implementing a knowledge about every format on the planet, so those zips stay zips and are treated as bninary data by version control, which makes them not too useful.

Re: Write plain text files

#235

Post by dm319 »

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…

And vimwiki!

Re: Write plain text files

#237

Post by GoblinSlayer »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #38

> I’ve brought my text files with me since 1990, from Mac to Windows to Linux to BSD > But plain text? Always. Everywhere. Quite obviously you have your files in ASCII. Anyone who needs more than 26 letters (or god forbid non-latin ones) are fucked. Sometimes quite literally. > Your writing should outlive you. Depending on companies is not an option. ASCII? Sure. EBCDIC? Ughh. UTF... 8? 16? 32? > If you rely on Word,…

Even if you don't want to use utf8, you can use any other text encoding, it's your files, nobody cares how you use them, do whatever works best for you.

Re: Write plain text files

#238

Post by cobbaut »

mro_name wrote: post #223

serious question: who of you actually used plain text (not even markdown) for all texts and notes for say a month? And who changed back, why and for what occasions?

I've been doing this for a really long time (2003-ish).

I use vim mainly, and open in Mousepad before sending text to people via e-mail (plain text email of course).

Most of my knowledge base is in plain text. It is easy to 'find' and 'grep'.

Re: Write plain text files

#239

Post by jerrre »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #179

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 poin…

I'd say he does write plain text files, which he then converts to html when he wants to share it on his site.

The difference perhaps being that the note-taking/creating aspect is done in plain text, and stored as such.

Re: Write plain text files

#240

Post by cobbaut »

jodrellblank wrote: post #206
emptyparadise wrote: post #130

I disagree with the whole "NEED VISUALS OR GRAPHICS?" section. I do need visuals! I do need graphics! I'm not a typewriter, why must my flow be interrupted with me having to leave my document to open some JPEG file whenever I need to show something that isn't text? It's not like this is crazy difficult or requires proprietary apps either. Writing a modern browser may be an impossible feat but I'm certain that it woul…

It's 2022 and people like the blog author are all "who needs screenshots? who needs audio? who needs colours? who needs fonts or styles? who wants to see their handwriting strokes? who needs metadata? I use text because it's 1970!". Hello? 4K video in my pocket, structured data streaming out of every system around me, all I'm supposed to want to capture is plain text? What a paucity of information, of detail, what an…

So when you need to remember a user/password combo for a new device, offline doorbell maybe, or a parcel number, or the address of a friend, then you record a 4K video instead of writing it in a text file?

Plain text just works, everywhere, all the time.

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