A little ridiculous to propose that purely textual files are more portable than markdown files that are also text files.
What exactly is unportable about using asterisk for bullet lists and brackets for URLs?
Write plain text files
271–280 of 425 posts
Re: Write plain text files
#272Plain 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…
> There is no shortage of markdown-based tools on all platforms
Could someone name one decent md editor for Android?
Re: Write plain text files
#273Plain 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…
Don't forget asciidoc. Coherent, has markup for things like video etc. It's a superior format to markdown, a pity it's so unknown
Why do you think it's superior to Markdown?
Re: Write plain text files
#274Earlier 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.
> 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 and on.
Narrow views on the world result in flawed thinking and absolutes that are just plain wrong.
Re: Write plain text files
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
After not using Word for years we've been using it for a few months now for a project, expecting it would be decent. While some of the ideas are great, the overall experience was pretty bad. Leaving autosave on often slowed down Word to an unworkable pace and after a few other issues (I'm not exactly sure what, wasn't involved) we just made sure only one person at a time works on the document. Some other annoying sma…
I agree, I also expected the whole office365 ecosystem to do what's supposed to, but I also found it useless due to the slowness and errors the whole team kept getting while working on the same file. That and the fact that it somehow feels like the Mac version of their products always comes with a bonus bug. Don't event get me started on their web versions.
It's the little things...
Re: Write plain text files
#276Earlier 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.
.docx files are just zip archives of XML files.
Re: Write plain text files
#277Earlier 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 find Edward Tuftes reflections on powerpoint vs. engineer-prose very eye-opening.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
Prose takes time, contemplation and thought. Leslie Lamport says similar.
Helps with understanding however not so much with selling.
Re: Write plain text files
#278I write markdown via Obsidian and sync it across devices using syncthing. Works very well.
Re: Write plain text files
#279Another 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 tried to git my resume once upon a time. It's still something I'd love to finish doing, it just makes sense to have a git repository as a timeline of your life:
Re: Write plain text files
#280Earlier 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.
Obviously not. Nobody is saying that plain text is never the right solution. Just that it isn't always the right solution.