What about writing data in markdown format, physically on the HDD. You can use bunch of different both online and local tools which will probably stay supported in the future. There is also no problem with implementing your own markdown editor (nice side, pet project as well). I store and run small server on my RPi, accessible through my phone and desktop. If I'd like to show the text to somebody I can easily copy it as a plain text, Word format or export it to HTML or PDF.
Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
21–30 of 131 posts
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#22I 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…
What are some things you use modification times for?
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#23Render to ASCII, everyone wins! (e.g. https://ascii-generator.site/)
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#24That "some" proprietary formats from the 80's and 90's are still readable is already causing real problems: because not *all* are. So text, possibly with Markdown or similar hints regarding emphasis and structure, is still vastly better than any alternative I can think of.
Yup.
Or .org for that matter,
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#25Plain text is so compelling because it's as simple as it gets, you can bring your own editor, you own your own data, and you can use version control. Text+ is compelling because you can have images and some kind of formatting. You want to store metadata and have backlinks and tags. Ideally with the possibility of collaborative editing. There should be a way to fuse these two.
The latter sounds like Obsidian or Logseq or most other markdown editors.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#26This essay is actually deeper than its surface appearance, about text versus other formats. It's about semantics and richness of content, although I am not sure Miris fully grasps what s/he is wrestling with. The author invokes the concept of "authenticity", and that's where it gets interesting. I used to set my students a question about information content in a class on the philosophy of procedural representation. W…
A digital format needs to be as simple as possible. If you need a 1000 page long definition for the word document format to be able to get the information out of it, it's not really good for anything when the format is forgotten.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#27This essay is actually deeper than its surface appearance, about text versus other formats. It's about semantics and richness of content, although I am not sure Miris fully grasps what s/he is wrestling with. The author invokes the concept of "authenticity", and that's where it gets interesting. I used to set my students a question about information content in a class on the philosophy of procedural representation. W…
> very high resolution photo of the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart
I thought photo quality was rather meh until the 50s or at least the 40s? Even with large films the results are often muddy in olden shots—while 70 mm movie film from the 60s will probably still be redigitized into super-duper-hd formats in the late 21st century (e.g. https://youtu.be/sCv-dIFGcd0).
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#28This essay is actually deeper than its surface appearance, about text versus other formats. It's about semantics and richness of content, although I am not sure Miris fully grasps what s/he is wrestling with. The author invokes the concept of "authenticity", and that's where it gets interesting. I used to set my students a question about information content in a class on the philosophy of procedural representation. W…
> very high resolution photo of the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart I thought photo quality was rather meh until the 50s or at least the 40s? Even with large films the results are often muddy in olden shots—while 70 mm movie film from the 60s will probably still be redigitized into super-duper-hd formats in the late 21st century (e.g. https://youtu.be/sCv-dIFGcd0 ).
I think the thought experiment still "works" (as much as philosophers can say something useful about the question it poses) even if the photo was upscaled.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#29I 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…
Indeed, digital archives use (I understand) various metadata standards such as:
https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-t...
or 'Dublin core' which is RDF.
Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
#30he said.. in courier, monospaced paragraphs format, morally as close to "plaintext" as you can be with a couple of diagrams which could have been ASCII art...
Ironically, the "pro plain text" link posted earlier used lots of formatting. I don't see why pure plain text is better in any way than plain text with formatting, like a simplified form of HTML ( , , , some kind of table formatting, etc). The latter is non-proprietary, easily read and diffed, and communicates better than pure text. Images have their own value, as do animations and video on occasion. Here matters bec…
like a simplified form of HTML (, , , some kind of table formatting, etc). The latter is non-proprietary, easily read and diffed, and communicates better than pure text.
Yes, but, the problem isn't typically being proprietary, when it comes to future use, but a closed, non standard, unknown format.
Yet you're creating a new standard here, with your own rules, which no one will understand, and which no automated tools can convert to another format.
(Eg some kind of table formatting)
Better to be 100% html than this.
(Maybe you meant that, but regardless, this is a good place for me to comment on standards being more important than anything else.)