Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

textfiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#31

Post by 1718627440 »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known people one-shot by pure text, like Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Qur'an, The Selfish Gene, Godel Escher and Bach, etc. Don't underestimate text.

A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense.

> Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

Depending on the denomination, 50% to 100% of the service they do revolves around reading from that book.

> preachers of the Church

Also what do you understand by "the Church".

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#32

Post by VladStanimir »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #20
vbezhenar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are insecure, because your ISP can change website responses and text format doesn't protect from that. So basically browser can't guarantee that you're looking at original web server response.

Insecure only if HTTP instead of HTTPS. The format being text, html, video, or an executable program has nothing to do with it.

This site is being deliver over HTTP instead of HTTPS, that is why it appears as insecure.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#33

Post by graemep »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known people one-shot by pure text, like Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Qur'an, The Selfish Gene, Godel Escher and Bach, etc. Don't underestimate text.

A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

The Bible was fairly widely read, but books were very expensive until the invention of printing. There were efforts - it would have been read to people, there were English translations of parts of it going back to the 7th century. Reading it aloud forms a large chunk of services even today.

> Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

Not read all of it certainly. However, most Christians have definitely read some of it. The Bible is not "the canonical text" for two reasons: there are disagreements about what is canonical, and it is not a single text, it is a collection of works.

Not reading all of it - why should we? What is the point of Christians reading things such as (most of?) Leviticus which is a collection of rules that do not apply to Christians? It is perfectly reasonable to be selective about which books within a large collection people read.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#34

Post by Twey »

I enjoy the (unironic?) juxtaposition of ‘use plain text files because they are universally understood and will still be accessible in the future’ with ‘stop writing things on paper like it's the 1900s and put everything on computers’.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#35

Post by Izkata »

ada0000 wrote: post #6
delichon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known people one-shot by pure text, like Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Qur'an, The Selfish Gene, Godel Escher and Bach, etc. Don't underestimate text.

What exactly does “one shot” mean here?

"One shot" means it only takes one exposure to have an effect, instead of multiple exposures over time having a cumulative effect.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#36

Post by lesuorac »

graemep wrote: post #33
anonymous908213 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

The Bible was fairly widely read, but books were very expensive until the invention of printing. There were efforts - it would have been read to people, there were English translations of parts of it going back to the 7th century. Reading it aloud forms a large chunk of services even today. > Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it. Not read all of it certainly. However, most Christians…

If you don't read all of it then how would you know you're abiding by it or that it's a collection of works that you agree with and want to associate with?

It's like commenting on the book Abundance without having read it.

Or talking about the Death Panels in ObamaCare.

I haven't read Mein Kampf / The Communist Manifesto but I would bet some pages if not chapters are agreeable to a lay-person while the overall theme wasn't.

This is how we end with the Dunning-Kruger effect meaning worse performers rate their own performance than high performers rate their own performance. (The actual effect found was that low-performers could not distinguish between a high or low performance; and although they rated themselves higher than they were it was still lower than the self-ratings of high performers for all tasks but Humor).

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#37

Post by krapp »

eviks wrote: post #23
krapp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

text files don't have "formatting" or "layout." They're just streams of ASCII characters. HTML is not plaintext.

They do, and it's even misapplied in this example - there are weird hard line breaks (an ASCII character) in the wrong places, breaking the supposed "accessibility" of the format. But also, you continue to miss the point - this lacking/bad layout/formatting is precisely the reason not to use plain text

>But also, you continue to miss the point - this lacking/bad layout/formatting is precisely the reason not to use plain text

I don't miss the point, I rather disagree with your opinion.

Formatting and layout are properties of the client, and you can display plaintext in any color or font you wish.

But the default - plain white background and plain black text with a simple serif or sans-serif font simulating a paper document - is perfectly readable.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#38

Post by Muehe »

eviks wrote: post #23
krapp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

text files don't have "formatting" or "layout." They're just streams of ASCII characters. HTML is not plaintext.

They do, and it's even misapplied in this example - there are weird hard line breaks (an ASCII character) in the wrong places, breaking the supposed "accessibility" of the format. But also, you continue to miss the point - this lacking/bad layout/formatting is precisely the reason not to use plain text

> there are weird hard line breaks (an ASCII character) in the wrong places

They aren't in the wrong place, if you view the site on desktop, or mobile browser in desktop-mode (for me at least), or the source, the line-breaks form proper paragraphs. Looks like the host actually delivers HTML/CSS with wrapping rules instead of plain text though, which messes it up for screens narrower than a full line in the file.

But either way, the file remains perfectly readable even with the added line breaks, not like any text is missing or moved.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#39

Post by anonymous908213 »

1718627440 wrote: post #31
anonymous908213 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.

So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense. > Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it. Depending on the denomination, 50% to 100% of the service they do revolves around reading from that book. > preachers of the Church Also what do you understand by "the Church".

It should be clear by "a ~1000 year period" that I was talking about history with that sentence, not the present day. For a very long time there was only one Church, the Catholic Church. Any "denominations" were local deviations considered heresy worthy of extermination, and it took the deadliest war in European history (prior to the world wars) for Christians to be able to openly practice beliefs that diverged from the Church.

> So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense.

I am not saying anything about whether the text of various ideologies is trustworthy or next. I am contending that contrary to the original comment I was replying to, it's not actually text that converts people to most ideologies. For Christianity, people generally adopt it for reasons like: being born into a Christian household/society; societal pressure; a desire for community; having received charitable aid when they needed it most; mid-life crises seeking a purpose in life; reckoning with mortality after a near-death experience or losing a loved one; witnessing something they perceive as miraculous. There are many, many reasons people become Christians, but I have never once heard of someone being converted merely by reading the Bible, and I suspect that such an occurence is exceedingly rare relative to all the other means of adoption.

Re: Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)

#40

Post by eviks »

Muehe wrote: post #38
eviks wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, and it's even misapplied in this example - there are weird hard line breaks (an ASCII character) in the wrong places, breaking the supposed "accessibility" of the format. But also, you continue to miss the point - this lacking/bad layout/formatting is precisely the reason not to use plain text

> there are weird hard line breaks (an ASCII character) in the wrong places They aren't in the wrong place, if you view the site on desktop, or mobile browser in desktop-mode (for me at least), or the source, the line-breaks form proper paragraphs. Looks like the host actually delivers HTML/CSS with wrapping rules instead of plain text though, which messes it up for screens narrower than a full line in the file. But…

I'm amused by all the plaintext defenders not being able to parse this simplest of the file formats!

> if you view the site on desktop ... , or mobile browser in desktop-mode (for me at least), or the source, the line-breaks form proper paragraphs

Nope. The first paragraph consists of 3 lines (#9,10,11), so has 2 extra linebreaks (both in desktop and source form). The next one is lines #13-21, so has 8 extra linebreaks. Because of that it doesn't reflow properly, so looks bad at most of the screen widths

> not like any text is missing or moved.

It is moved due to linebreaks, here is a simple example: the notation of the numbers is force-moved to the next line instead of being adjacent to the numbers, this hurts your "perfect" readability

> re characters 32 to 126

> (decimal)

There is nothing perfect about readability of the poorly formatted/laid out text! And doing everything "plainly" simply robs you of the ability to reach the expressiveness available even to the cave man

Post reply on HN