Hijacking this article. But can someone reference me a "how to make Markdown look nice tutorial" I just have zero aesthetic intuition and would love some simple guidelines to follow.
Write plain text files
251–260 of 425 posts
Re: Write plain text files
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I switched from dropbox to mega years ago when the former removed Linux support. TIL mega have version support so I need to enable that and try it out. First thing I do on a new device is setup my mega shared drives - and there is a lot of plaintext files there!
Dropbox removed Linux support? It seems to work fine for me on arch Linux with btrfs.
If I remember well, they removed the ability to host Dropbox folder on a encrypted drive.
Re: Write plain text files
#253> NEED HIERARCHY? Use directories — also known as folders.
I really wish I could define a custom order for files in a directory. A folder hierarchy is almost an outline, but not quite.
Yes I could prefix with "01", "02", and sort alphabetically, but those are cumbersome workarounds and reordering is a pain.
Are there file systems that allow for a custom order of files/folders?
Re: Write plain text files
#254What 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.
Yeh I agree, it’s write once read everywhere.
But if you need rich text and images, it seems like the only alternative to plain text.
Re: Write plain text files
#255Plain 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…
As someone who lives in a terminal, I find @junegunn’s “journal” markup format a lot more pleasing to the eyes than Markdown — holy kaleidoscopic colours, batman. Bonus: in a weird way, the colours of journal trained me to love lisp.
Re: Write plain text files
#256> NEED HIERARCHY? Use directories — also known as folders. I really wish I could define a custom order for files in a directory. A folder hierarchy is almost an outline, but not quite. Yes I could prefix with "01", "02", and sort alphabetically, but those are cumbersome workarounds and reordering is a pain. Are there file systems that allow for a custom order of files/folders?
I suppose the question is where you want the sorted version to appear. In the output of `ls`? You could write a wrapper to `ls`, maybe?
Re: Write plain text files
#257> NEED HIERARCHY? Use directories — also known as folders. I really wish I could define a custom order for files in a directory. A folder hierarchy is almost an outline, but not quite. Yes I could prefix with "01", "02", and sort alphabetically, but those are cumbersome workarounds and reordering is a pain. Are there file systems that allow for a custom order of files/folders?
I suppose the question is where you want the sorted version to appear. In the output of `ls`? You could write a wrapper to `ls`, maybe?
In the system's file explorer (Finder/Windows File Explorer).
This would give me a visual outline and the ability to open any file with its corresponding app.
Imagine writing a book and using folders as chapters. You could then write individual pages with different apps, say some plain text, some Word documents, a few spreadsheets, images, videos, etc.
Re: Write plain text files
#258Earlier 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…
It's great, until it isnt. For small and simple documents (sub 20 pages), there's no better option. In my experience it starts to creak on large documents with multiple editors. I did a project many years ago where the key deliverable was a large report, worked upon by 3-4 contributors over 12 weeks. That last week was absolute madness. Document got corrupted, and we tried all sorts of things. We ended up importing t…
I've seen online Word become extremely slow even for small documents with a few editors.
It doesn't help that there are lots of versions of online Word - there's the one that lives in Sharepoint, the one I get to via Outlook, the one in Teams, and (maybe? somehow?) the desktop Word when editing an online file.
Re: Write plain text files
#259Another 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" macOS Time Machine and Windows Shadow Copy aren't perfect git-based versioning systems, but it's nice something in the general direction exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(macOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy
macOS also has support for local file history, even if many apps try to ignore these features: https://support.apple.com/sv-se/guide/mac-help/mh40710/12.0/...
When they introduces this they changed the standard file operations and replaced "Save as…" with "Save a copy" - this was not universally welcomed.
Re: Write plain text files
#260I 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…
I mean you could also just use Markdown. Put the image in the same folder, so you don’t loose it, and then use a relative link from your text file.
If you are using a markdown viewer it should render nicely, if you are using a text editor there is just a path where the image should be, so also no problem.
Some editors like Typora can be configured to automatically save images next to the markdown file, which is really helpful.