This rules -- but needs to actually be plain text.
Plain Text Sports
21–30 of 113 posts
Re: Plain Text Sports
#22This is great! I wonder what needs to happen in order to get `curl plaintextsports.com` to Just Work, similar to `curl wttr.in`. EDIT: After inspecting the HTML, I think Plain Text Sports is a bit of a misnomer. With that name, I might have expected a lot of tags in the markup, but there are no none to be found. Instead, CSS is used for the layout, even line breaks. So, Hypertext Sports?
Removed and added font-family: monospace to the . It's definitely not plaintext.
Re: Plain Text Sports
#23This made me remember that quite a lot of people in some countries still use teletext for sports cores. Similar to this site, it's fast, simple and very much low-def. In Finland (where teletext was big back in the day), you can still access web versions of the main TV channels' teletext services [1][2]. Not sure about other countries.
Even if you don't follow sports that much (like me), it's also a great way to browse news in general – without any clutter or clickbait, as the technology is so restricted. I've noticed it's so much easier to avoid doomscrolling traps compared to regular websites, especially during the latest global horrors.
Re: Plain Text Sports
#24Where do you get your data from? I've found sports data (especially odds/lines) to be overly expensive when trying to build hobby apps.
ESPN has a surprisingly comprehensive JSON API that isn't locked down. If you're only using it for a hobby app, you won't run into any issues. It's been around for quite a while.
I thought they shutdown their public api.
Re: Plain Text Sports
#25This made me remember that quite a lot of people in some countries still use teletext for sports cores. Similar to this site, it's fast, simple and very much low-def. In Finland (where teletext was big back in the day), you can still access web versions of the main TV channels' teletext services [1][2]. Not sure about other countries. Even if you don't follow sports that much (like me), it's also a great way to brows…
Spaniard here. My dad still uses teletext for that, even though he is more or less capable with a computer. He loves just typing the page numbers and watching the scores updated in almost realtime.
Re: Plain Text Sports
#26Does it really need to override my font size? 13px is too small for my display. Of course removing the override breaks it because it has a max-width set in px. But why does it have a max-width? It is important not to have long lines of text but there are no long lines on this page, each box has it's own size. So by removing font-size and max-width rules this is far more readable for me. And while I'm at it don't forc…
> Does it really need to override my font size? 13px is too small for my display
The advent of good browser-based zooming has made non-default font-size users like yourself a small segment. The days of having to author everything in em/rem is mostly over – keeping everything scalable was tedious and prone to issues.
I'd bet you encounter issues regularly: explicit font sizes on a root element are a ubiquitous practice. Examples include HN itself, Google, MDN, Apple, etc.
That being said, 13px is quite small. I'd encourage at least a 16px minimum. But for now, simply zoom in with Cmd/Ctrl-+
Re: Plain Text Sports
#27Hey, HN! Creator here!
I started building Plain Text Sports last year when I was watching an NFL playoff game in rural southwest Wisconsin. We had poor TV reception -- the image was going in-and-out -- and the local radio station was mostly static. I tried to check ESPN, but the loading bar was as frozen as the ground outside. I then had the idea for a website designed for the pure sports fan: no ads, no images, just scores, play-by-play and stats, with a simple information-dense display.
I initially added support for the NBA so I could follow my beloved Milwaukee Bucks. I posted it to /r/nba, got over 600 upvotes in a few hours, and got perma-banned for self-promotion. (I did a Show HN too, but it didn't take off. [1]) Over the following months I added NHL, MLB, NFL, college basketball and football, and added standings and team schedules so it could really be a one-stop-shop for my sporting needs. Just this past month I added MLS and NWSL (National Women's Soccer League). I plan on adding the WNBA and the Premier League later this year too.
Obviously I designed the site with minimalism and efficiency in mind, as a reaction to the bloated web we see today. We don't need heaps of JavaScript just to display a bit of text, nor do we need half-a-dozen sites tracking our "engagement", and our "retention". People just want to get the information they're looking for, as fast as possible. Technology shouldn't get in the way.
Despite the austere presentation, I'm really proud of the design of the site. As a commenter noted, it's not actually plain text, but does use some CSS and a tiny bit of JavaScript (sue me!). But there are a lot of small details that I put a lot of effort into: the game times on the front page automatically show up in your local time zone, and the boxes automatically expand to fit long time-zones. For the NBA, the raw play-by-play data I get is very granular. A steal, for example, is both a turnover by the offensive player, and a steal for the defensive player, but I combine those into a single event in the timeline. For the NFL, I draw an ASCII drawing of the field showing the progress of the most recent play [2]. When a team wins a championship, they get an ASCII trophy and a dedicated spot on the front-page for the next week. It's been really fun trying to figure out how to pack as much information as possible into a 45 column-wide display.
A streamer I watch on Twitch [3] who does marketing at Nvidia also had a competition amongst his viewers to make their own ads, and that led me down another rabbit hole of fun "plain-text" videos. [4][5][6].
Plain Text Sports also led to my next project. I get a lot of data from publicly accessible, but undocumented JSON APIs, and it was frustrating digging through giant JSON files trying to understand how certain situations were represented. That led me to build jless [7], a command-line JSON viewer, which made it to the front page last month.
[1]: Original Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26310314
[2]: ASCII football field: https://twitter.com/CodeIsTheEnd/status/1436003783327293452
[3]: Atrioc, Nvidia marketing streamer: https://twitch.tv/atrioc
[4]: Never Miss Moment Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t1qY0vOJWc
[5]: Bucks Championship Run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WHcP4PTBHY
[6]: Wisconsin Sports Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLsm0MirOEg
[7]: jless, a command-line JSON viewer: https://jless.io
Re: Plain Text Sports
#28Does it really need to override my font size? 13px is too small for my display. Of course removing the override breaks it because it has a max-width set in px. But why does it have a max-width? It is important not to have long lines of text but there are no long lines on this page, each box has it's own size. So by removing font-size and max-width rules this is far more readable for me. And while I'm at it don't forc…
> Does it really need to override my font size? 13px is too small for my display The advent of good browser-based zooming has made non-default font-size users like yourself a small segment. The days of having to author everything in em/rem is mostly over – keeping everything scalable was tedious and prone to issues. I'd bet you encounter issues regularly: explicit font sizes on a root element are a ubiquitous practic…
I'm sure I have "problems" quite often but the sites listed are quite readable. Sure, I would prefer them to use my default font size but something with their contrast, font or otherwise seems to make it not stand out.
> non-default font-size users like yourself
What does this even mean? The default font is being overridden and irreverent here. Are you suggesting that there is a default default font that is expected to be used across all browsers?
Re: Plain Text Sports
#29Hey, HN! Creator here! I started building Plain Text Sports last year when I was watching an NFL playoff game in rural southwest Wisconsin. We had poor TV reception -- the image was going in-and-out -- and the local radio station was mostly static. I tried to check ESPN, but the loading bar was as frozen as the ground outside. I then had the idea for a website designed for the pure sports fan: no ads, no images, just…
Thanks for your work. I've been using your site for a while. Amazing how in 2022, with 4G widely available, it's that difficult to check a game score every five minutes while you're working. It feels as if sites like ESPN optimize their sites to minimize the probability that they are useful.
Re: Plain Text Sports
#30I like it! Sites like NHL.com or ESPN.com are borderline hostile navigating this info. It is reminiscent of the morning sports pages in the newspaper I would read each morning as a kid. The one improvement would be if there was page that summarized the league. i.e. Click on NHL and it lists scores, games that day, standings, and possibly scoring leaders. That would be capture all of the important points on one clean…
I've made CBS Sports my go to for scores. It loads quickly (for me at least), it's easy to read. They provide betting lines right up until game start (if you are into that) and even tell you what network is broadcasting the game, including competitors.