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Write plain text files

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Re: Write plain text files

#331

Post by morganvachon »

qayxc wrote: post #274
cobbaut wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Plain text just works, everywhere, all the time. No it doesn't. Try a plain text description of an electronic circuit vs a circuit diagram. Try a a plain text instruction sheet vs an illustrated one. Try plain text sheet music vs actual sheet music. Try a mathematical plot vs plain text tables. Try concept drawings of product vs text descriptions. Try construction drawing vs plain text descriptions. I could go on a…

> No it doesn't. Try a plain text description of an electronic circuit vs a circuit diagram.

Maybe it's just me, but I do this at work all the time. I create build sheets out of just plain text before I fire up the circuit simulator, so I've got a good mind map of it and something to refer back to. Granted I'm not dealing with advanced circuits, it's usually industrial machinery and motor control, or at most a simple digital timer circuit, but I do just fine with plain text for something highly technical.

Re: Write plain text files

#332

Post by qayxc »

sicariusnoctis wrote: post #281
qayxc wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plain text just works, everywhere, all the time. No it doesn't. Try a plain text description of an electronic circuit vs a circuit diagram. Try a a plain text instruction sheet vs an illustrated one. Try plain text sheet music vs actual sheet music. Try a mathematical plot vs plain text tables. Try concept drawings of product vs text descriptions. Try construction drawing vs plain text descriptions. I could go on a…

> No it doesn't. Try a plain text description of an electronic circuit vs a circuit diagram. I'm not an EE, but there's SPICE for regular electronic circuits and SysVerilog et al for logic circuits. Math can be typeset in LaTeX, though its plain text readability depends on the formula. Category theory diagrams can be written in a simple language. Sheet music is some sort of XML, though I imagine there could be a more…

> there's SPICE for regular electronic circuits and SysVerilog et al for logic circuits

Both are inputs for programs, not actual representations for humans to work with and -understand. Try and design or better yet fix actual hardware with a SPICE netlist or Verilog program, good luck with that. Different use cases require different representations and the world doesn't just consist of software.

> Category theory diagrams can be written in a simple language

Category theory diagrams are not curves or function plots.

I get the feeling that you are confusing file formats with representation. If I need external software to actually render the input (which can be binary or text for all I care) into a human-readable and -consumable format, what good is text?

What's the "readability" of an SVG, LaTex, or worse - MS DOCX - document?

How is this:

  Example netlist
  v1 1 0 dc 15
  r1 1 0 2.2k
  r2 1 2 3.3k     
  r3 2 0 150
  .end
even remotely comparable to this: https://sub.allaboutcircuits.com/images/01004.png

And again, I'm not talking about document formats for software - I'm talking about data representation for humans.

Re: Write plain text files

#333

Post by AlanYx »

harha wrote: post #299

Quite the irony that smartphones as the most successful incarnation of modern computers are the antithesis to this. Folders are hidden, no default text editor, lock-ins everywhere you look.

I don't think it's necessarily ironic. I'd argue that the "success" of the mobile and web app paradigms are in large part driving the plain text movement. It's almost as if a tipping point has been reached, where the complexity thicket of siloed everything, hidden everything, subscription everything has pushed people in the other direction, more so than proprietary formats just by themselves would have been able to do.

Re: Write plain text files

#334

Post by FreezerburnV »

Hackbraten wrote: post #263
yakubin wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is pleasing, but when you specifically look at Git, its UX is rather disappointing. I'm not even talking about the CLI (after a while you can get used to it). I'm talking about resolving conflicts. If I have a sequence of changes A -> B -> C, then I change A and rebase B on top of A resolving any conflicts, then rebasing C on top of B will most of the time mean that Git will most likely ask me to resolve the…

While I agree in that Git’s UX is abysmal for the beginner or casual user, no one should have to endure resolving the same conflicts over and over again. In my opinion, the following configuration should have been the default with Git: git config --global rerere.enabled true git config --global rerere.autoUpdate true The `enabled` part means: transparently record all resolutions in a database, and re-apply them whene…

I had no idea these options were a thing. Thank you for pointing them out, adding them to my config immediately and hoping it makes some merges and whatnot easier going forward.

Re: Write plain text files

#335

Post by dpcan »

dpcan wrote: post #95
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 think my Dropbox is already basically this. It has a revision history of my text files I think.

Dropbox does this but it’s limited to a certain number of days, so not the exact same thing. I love the idea of a simple hit for everything.

Re: Write plain text files

#336

Post by Zak »

phreack wrote: post #139
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 once thought git for humans would be a great idea but never got around to speccing it out. Later on, a lawyer friend showed me the software they used 'for backup' (that they paid thousands per month for) and it turned out everything about it was just exactly like SVN. The terminology was different, the UX was laser focused to the intended users, but at the end of the day it was commits, syncs, merging, pretty much…

I had a similar thought some time ago and concluded it's an impossible task. The problem is that it would need to understand every file format its users care about and be able to represent changes in a useful way.

How do you merge destructive edits to image files?

Re: Write plain text files

#337

Post by D13Fd »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #303
D13Fd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you using it on Linux or something? Or maybe with very large documents? I use it every day and really haven’t had slowness issues, even when running via Parallels on the Mac side. Of course, typically my docs are I have seen undo history go away when edits collide with multiple users, but that’s really the only way it could work. And you can still view old versions of the doc if you need to retrieve/restore some…

>Were you using it on Linux or something? Or maybe with very large documents ~250 pages, ~100 images, not something I expect a modern computer to struggle with. We used the web version on Linux sometimes, but I think it also happened when we didn't. >I have seen undo history go away when edits collide with multiple users, but that’s really the only way it could work. And you can still view old versions of the doc if…

That makes sense, although obviously the downside to a manual check-in/merge process is that it greatly slows down the editing flow.

Personally for the kinds of documents I work on, I'd rather risk losing my undo history than have to deal with manually merging changes from multiple users.

Plus, without real-time concurrent editing, the changes are much more likely to conflict.

Re: Write plain text files

#338

Post by DerArzt »

nextos wrote: post #30
elteto wrote: post #20

This is one of the main strengths of Obsidian, which I have been using lately and I’m extremely happy with: everything is just Markdown files in some folder on disk. Zero danger of lock in. You can have a disk hierarchy if you desire, or trust that search will find you what you are looking for. For me search works fairly well and if I need something extra I can just grep/sed/awk. Plus it has the features that a simpl…

I use org-mode the same way. I have a flat directory with many small files, inspired by Zettelkasten and by simple wikis. No server, no dependencies. This also works well for small organizations. Both GitHub and GitLab are able to render org files, with some minor limitations. Hence, a simple repository full of org files is already a wiki. Even local links just work, with zero dependencies. It's possible to transform…

The only problem with org (which may not be a problem for some folks) is that if you want to be able to edit org files with the least friction you need to use Emacs. I tried the org extension for VS Code and vim in the past and they just weren't quite the same as editing org via emacs.

Re: Write plain text files

#339

Post by goosedragons »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #151
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.

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…

At least for LaTeX there are packages like lineno that will add line numbers to the compiled document which can then be referenced with a label automatically similar to equation or figure captions. So if somebody tells you to change line 23 you can reply with "Please see line \lineref{whatever} for change." and it will automatically fill where that change is to "Please see line 25" or whatever in case it's been moved by other changes.

Re: Write plain text files

#340

Post by pradn »

lobocinza wrote: post #304

Use Markdown. There are zero disadvantages when compared to pure text files as it's plain text but with syntax and extra features on some text editors. The main advantages of writing plain text files: - source control - view/edit anywhere - doesn't get deprecated (Lindy effect) - easy to share - small size There's no reason to use suites like MS Office and Google Drive unless your team is routinely using it or you ne…

One issue with Markdown is that there's many flavors with subtle differences in parsing/interpretation. If you're looking to be able to parse the file in the future, you have to be careful to pick a flavor with wide support or to stick to the most common features of Markdown.
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