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The future of education is plain text

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Re: The future of education is plain text

#301

Post by dom0 »

ferdterguson wrote: post #279
marcosdumay wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to second that. RestructuredText is very powerful, and has an official specification. Basically what Markdown is missing. Yet, it is plain text and easy to parse.

I like reStructuredText, but the format is grating compared to markdown. The two things I do the most are sectioning and links. Inline links are ok in rst, but I prefer markdown. Sectioning though is awful. I hate having to hold the damn == or -- or ~~ down and getting the length right. It's easier to parse when you read the plaintext, but makes me loath writing it. Most the time I deal with md or rst, they end up fo…

Personally I don't think sectioning is that bad, a little annoying when working with other people that don't do it, though...

   foo
   ======================
... the easy and built-in extensibility is a huge plus though, as is Sphinx and the pretty good output writers for many formats. Sphinx btw. works with Markdown, too.

Quite possibly my biggest annoyance with rST/Sphinx is the hanging toctree issue, and poor support for multi-format images/figures.

The 100 % offline search in Sphinx is somewhat of a mixed bag and doesn't always give good results, though it's fine for reference works.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#303

Post by pmlnr »

Spooky23 wrote: post #104
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #57

Which reminds me of my "biggest" crux these days: what should I replace Evernote with? Looking for a text-based solution, possibly open source, possibly encrypted, and possibly with sync.

Textfiles + + OS Search facility. Or something like DevonThink.

text files + syncthing + grep

https://syncthing.net/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep...

Re: The future of education is plain text

#304

Post by pmlnr »

pyre wrote: post #13
peterburkimsher wrote: post #6

What about the existing "standard", PowerPoint slides and PDFs? Although most of my notes could be plain-text, any graphs or figures need pictures. ASCII art doesn't cut it.

Plain-text just needs to be the format. Checkout (e.g.) Markdown editors like Typora. The underlying format is Markdown, but it can be edited and displayed in a more visual fashion. With the text being in plain-text, it guarantees someone the base ability to just open up (e.g.) Notepad.exe if all else fails vs. trying to open up a Powerpoint '97 presentation with embedded RealMedia files in 2017.

Typora is surprisingly pleasant to use, so +1 for that.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#306

Post by icc97 »

prestonbriggs wrote: post #71
Pxtl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, go teach a 60-year-old math teacher to use TeX.

I'm over 60 and have been using TeX since '85. Same manual after all these years... I still seem to be able to learn new stuff, though it's not always clear it's worth the bother.

So I'm guessing you were 28-38 when you learned TeX, rather than 60+.

If you were over 60 in 1985 and are still posting to HN, that would be really cool.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#307

Post by JdeBP »

nategri wrote: post #145
doublerebel wrote: post #67

Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method. Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method. Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method. Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted. Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads. Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels. Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn…

Started with a Stallman-esque rant I could get down with and then ended in a very un-Stallman-esque and opaque ad. :(

I was half expecting it to end in a plug for GOPHER.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#308

Post by polygot »

ReverseCold wrote: post #295
polygot wrote: post #228

While plain text is compatible with virtually 100% of every OS ever, when I try to open a txt file on my windows machine it asks what application to open it in, since there are no default apps (Windows 7 and earlier.) This might make it appear that plain text files are a "special" format because it doesn't open up when you double click on it. I have sent plain text files to some of my colleagues in the past (so that…

I'm pretty sure .txt opens in notepad..?

It does, but sometimes the line breaks don't show up so it's all on one line with what appears to be tabs. WordPad works fine though.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#309

Post by posterboy »

edtechdev wrote: post #118
ezoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, mathematical notation should be simplified.

There's been some work on english language versions of mathematical expressions, which at the very least can help with accessibility. Handbook for Spoken Mathematics (1983) http://web.efzg.hr/dok/MAT/vkojic/Larrys_speakeasy.pdf MathPlayer https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ TalkMaths http://talkmaths.sourceforge.net/ Language and Mathematics: Bridging between Natural Language and Mathematical Language in S…

I am not sure that is a good idea. The reduced entropy of our writing system, as easy to learn as it is, doesn't work very well with the density of mathematical formulas. If anything, I would favour more symbolic formulas.

Re: The future of education is plain text

#310

Post by collinmanderson »

confounded wrote: post #137
Sreyanth wrote: post #131

The future of education might be plain text, but not for the reasons mentioned in the article. Also, I think something can be the future of XYZ if it solves the problems XYZ face currently. The current content for education is good, but is definitely bandwidth-heavy and is tough to maintain. But dropping to plain text will force us let go a few things that otherwise make learning more effective. I think HTML (or a WY…

Disagree. HTML is a fine output format, but one that can always be generated from plain text. HTML is a poor storage format for the editable 'raw' content itself. Images, videos, and animations can all be done in markdown -- they're just references to files. Even something as small as the the MathJax CDN getting retired means that I have old HTML notes which are now 'dead'. If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown sour…

> If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, they're just not coming back.

That's why I try to use HTML as the universal storage. It's not friendly to edit by hand, but with a basic, limited editor it's wonderful.

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