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Write plain text files

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Re: Write plain text files

#351

Post by newbamboo »

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.

Powershell can generate and manipulate word docs, as another alternative to keeping content in a markdown file.

Re: Write plain text files

#352

Post by zouhair »

D13Fd wrote: post #154
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.

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 a proprietary format, it's not gonna last.

Microsoft word can't even open files from old version of the same software.

None of these word document will be readable in 50 years from now, a text file though.

Re: Write plain text files

#353

Post by zouhair »

testermelon wrote: post #161
IceWreck wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt docx binary ? So git is storing a new version of the file every commit. That way too much storage space youre wasting.

I've heard somewhere that docx is actually gzipped xml. But I never really confirmed that myself. But it's binary once gzipped, so your point still stands.

Juzipped. Just take a docx file and append .zip to it and open it.

Re: Write plain text files

#354

Post by crossroadsguy »

awill wrote: post #98
crossroadsguy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://fsnot.es - FSNotes is a native (~100% Swift) FOSS app which I believe is modelled after Bear.app. I have been looking at it for sometime now, from a distance. Very active development. Lots of options. But it still doesn’t seem as stable as I would like it to be. Though sometimes it seems kinda all over. For example - it lets you set a storage and then another storage for “git” handling id you’d like to use it…

I'd never heard of fsnot.es. It looks great. I bought Ulysses ages ago on Mac because I wanted a performant, native-app markdown app that supported external folders. Unfortunately, shortly after purchasing it Ulysses went subscription only. I had no alternative, so I kept paying. However, I don't used any of the advanced features, and I'm really overpaying when I have no iPhone, don't use iCloud, and just do simple m…

You won’t be able to.

See if you’d like Joplin or Simplenote. I still use Simplenote. Because even though FSNotes seems promising, it’s still not there.

Re: Write plain text files

#355

Post by jodrellblank »

cobbaut wrote: post #240
jodrellblank wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I often see a serial number on a device and take a photo rather than typing on a phone keyboard. Or use software which blocks clipboard functionality and take a screenshot instead of typing it out, yes. OneNote does character recognition on all images and makes them searchable. If a doorbell or key safe has a keypad and I need my computer to look up the code, what difference does it make if the code is text or photo of scribble? Because one day my computer might forget how to open bitmap files? How likely is that? The safe will have turned to dust before all software which can read JPGs is lost to history).

> "Plain text just works, everywhere, all the time."

My point is not "text doesn't work", but it would be good if other things worked that well and there's no good reason why they can't. You don't eat plain oatmeal for every meal because it works, and shun restaurants because one day they might close. You don't plug your ears because you can read lyrics and sheet music and one day you might go deaf. This is like the "first class functions" of programming. Wanting first class functions is not saying that plain loops don't work, it's saying that more powerful things are desirable even if they aren't cross-language compatible.

Re: Write plain text files

#356

Post by qayxc »

lkxijlewlf wrote: post #342
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…

Plain text can be used to generate those. Anything other than plain text is merely a visualization.

Which makes you require software again, so what's the point exactly?

A cool idea for a logo stored as SVG cannot be visualised by a human, neither can text data rows of a CT scan or a stress visualisation from an FEM or FEA simulation.

What you call "merely a visualisation" in many cases is the data you (as a human being) are actually interested in; the storage format is an implementation detail and I'm very surprised how this clear distinction seems to be ignored by some.

Re: Write plain text files

#357

Post by [deleted] »

0xad wrote: post #242
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. Open up a word document (.docx) in hex editor (head -80 foo.docx | xxd) and you'll see it's not a plain file on a binary level. Now do the same with any python, php, html, and js files and you'll see that they're plain files. That's the difference that Derek is talking about.

[deleted]

Re: Write plain text files

#358

Post by xenodium »

tveyben wrote: post #329
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…

@xenodium Wow - impressive reviews for your ‘plain org’ app. When I grow up with my eMacs and org usage (I’m only playing now as org is new to me - but I know it’s what I have been missing!!!) I for sure must give your app a shot for iOS usage

Nice to hear. Thank you. Enjoy your emacs + org journey! It’s quite a fun ride.

Re: Write plain text files

#359

Post by munk-a »

sslayer wrote: post #344
Zak wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

LOL,sweet summer child, its all 0's and 1's

Please explain, in 0's and 1's how to combine the change to add a dark splotch over here and a patch of blue over there so that the image you get out of the merge has both the dark splotch and the patch of blue... without teaching git how to comprehend image file formats (and assuming you're not using a bitmap which is sort of a free win).

Re: Write plain text files

#360

Post by conductr »

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 feel like this is a solution without a problem. Or a problem without pain.

Most people have no issues navigating a full folder of revisions to get to “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” but anything resembling version control would simply be unused. At corporate level, the version features of box.net, egnyte, and others are rarely used. I'd say most people don't even know they can navigate the revisions until they are in a data loss situation and asking about how to recover a corrupted file (which occurs most frequently with Excel files in my experience)

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