This might be off topic but in terms of communication such as email, plain text seems the most authentic format to me. For example, if you are one of those sales guys that bolds and highlights the important parts of an email that you send, it's off-putting.
The only exception I would give is if you wanted to add an inline image or an emoji -- everything else, plain text.
Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
111–120 of 131 posts
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#112This argument feels ... not quite like a strawman, but more pedantic than I think it needs to be. I don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand. The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible." Nobody is suggesting you go through all of your photos, transcribe your emotional reaction to each picture, and then delete the image. But, if you…
I think you've over corrected too far in the other direction. "Write plain text" is definitely not a shorthand for "use open formats". PDF is an open format. Approximately nobody who says "write plain text" thinks putting everything in PDF is an acceptable alternative. They don't even want you writing in HTML, for that matter. They want Markdown. They really do mean something fairly close to "plain text".
I'm never going to write directly in PDF, but if I want to preserve something? 100% I will save it as a PDF if it's document-like.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#113I feel like a lot of use plain text proponents forget that outside of ASCII and now UTF-8, lots of alleged plain text documents with diacritics or non-latin characters are at least slightly difficult to open because of their somewhat esoteric encodings. Plain text isn't as universal as it is often claimed, although it is immensely simpler than some other formats. But maybe we should all use monochrome bitmap files fo…
If it's 2022 and someone is _still_ saving plaintext in a non-Unicode encoding where going with Unicode is a perfectly viable option, I will personally ensure that (figuratively) they are burnt at the stake.
In addition to UTF-8, my language happens to have ~2 additional code pages/Latin based encodings. Some websites still serve (or very recently used to serve) text files in such broken encodings, so I have to convert such files before use. It's deeply unpleasant. Windows has supported UTF-8 in some fashion for over 15 years, get with the program people.
(I would make an exception for preserving historical non-UTF-8 files in their original byte-exact form, for the same reason that I wouldn't digitise an analogue photograph and then burn the original - but let's be real, all such files have been created by now)
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#114I got quite a lot of use out of metadata over the years, such that now I'll probably get a nervous itch and tremors all over my body if I attempt to use just plain text. Specifically, the creation and modification times for each addition to my notes are rather valuable, especially with the work-from-home lifestyle aka ‘day fades into night into day’—with which more people are gonna be familiarized in these years. Tha…
I supplement my workflow with some judicious use of text-expander macros. I can type a total of three characters for the current date-stamp, or four for a date + timestamp. This makes it easy to reflexively date literally anything systemwide: from archive filenames, to code comments, to config file tweaks, to actual notes.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#115“all the binary formats of the 1990s can be opened today” Oh, sweet summer child. Scribe/mss. Koalapad. A bunch of Apple 2GS, Apple 3, and Lisa formats. Lotus Improv. The points about semantics and authenticity are wonderful, but I think the presumption that all formats can be opened is mistaken exactly because those that can’t be opened become effectively invisible and lost.
Emulation can bring them back in a limited fashion. Though obviously un-marrying them from the original system environment and making them accessible outside of the VM can be a challenge.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#116> What ultimately matters is that information is captured and preserved as thoroughly as possible. Between a picture that expresses a thousand words, and plain text file that sacrifices its detail and authenticity, why wouldn't we choose the former? Indeed, this question applies even the choice may sacrifice the longevity. What's the point of longevity, when the pursuit of it can compromise our ability to capture the…
By that definition, using literally any point of view to capture, measure or describe information is a lie.
I take issue with that. This is stripping the word "lie" from it's time-honoured meaning (~"distorting or fabricating truths to influence decision making or perception"), and dilutes it for when we actually need to call out lies.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#117Real archivists (as in people that have archivist as a job description and work at places that have “storing data forever” as a mission statement) tend to store the data in multiple formats. The source + a few derivations. They also store a bunch of copies to ward against bitrot. And they periodically compare the copies. Real archivists use a lot of data :)
I think part of the job of an "archivist" archivist (as opposed to an amateur archivist), is making information accessible to others. For that, you need derivations, because nobody will necessarily know how to deploy a Mac OS 7 virtual machine, install Claris Works (or whatever it is), load the original file onto the machine, and then navigate the contemporary UI (with it's unusual conventions) to get at the information they wanted. For personal data, I already know how to get an old environment up and running, so I'm happy enough to keep multiple copies of the original and of any software I need to open it.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#118"Prioritising the longevity of data can sacrifice the authenticity of what it tries to capture and preserve. When I say authenticity, I refer to how accurate and detailed the data in question preserves a particular state. An original raw image, for example, will capture a landscape much more authentically than written text would. Written text will inevitably comprise of ambiguity and even bias, if not distortion." Or…
There's a reason why it's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. There are trade-offs, and at the end of the day some things are more efficiently described in text, and some visually.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#119It seems the author overlooked the possibility of writing out the full binary string of whatever format he'd like (i.e., "zero one one ..."), prefaced by instructions on how to parse that.
That would give you great "authenticity" (in his definition) and great longevity.
Not practical for reading back, but that was not the point. With the help of a few simple scripts, writing is easy. So, in the end, not really an argument against storing information exclusively in plaintext.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#120No post body was provided.