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Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

blog.miris.design

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Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#51

Post by smasher164 »

eatmygodetia wrote: post #45

I feel like a lot of use plain text proponents forget that outside of ASCII and now UTF-8, lots of alleged plain text documents with diacritics or non-latin characters are at least slightly difficult to open because of their somewhat esoteric encodings. Plain text isn't as universal as it is often claimed, although it is immensely simpler than some other formats. But maybe we should all use monochrome bitmap files fo…

I think for a plaintext format to be "complete", it needs some mechanism of associating the language with some segment of text. Plaintext formats that don't acknowledge unified characters are just Latin-biased.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#52

Post by falcolas »

coldtea wrote: post #15
copperx wrote: post #3

> but dismissing or abandoning media files is a much more guaranteed potential loss of information – information which plain text cannot capture due to its limitations. Some examples are sorely needed. How is a Word/InDesign file more authentic than a plain text file? Or is the author talking about media? Is a ProTools session more authentic than Wav files?

> Is a ProTools session more authentic than Wav files? Dunno about 'authentic', but since the part you've quoted specifically talks about "loss of information", the WAV files indeed incur loss of information compared to a ProTools session. E.g. if it's a single stereo wav file render, it would miss all the individual channels, for starters. If it's multiple wav files with all the channels as stems, it will still miss…

> E.g. if it's a single stereo wav file render, it would miss all the individual channels, for starters.

A DAW session is like notes for writing a book. Not everything is going to make it in, and the choice of what does make it from the notes to the book, and how it's changed, is quite intentional. And I, personally, don't consider a book to be "lossy" or "unauthentic" because it doesn't also come with all the author's notes.

So, if it's not in the final mix, it's because it's not supposed to be in the final mix; it's not that the data is lost because of technical limitations. And like notes from a book, unless you throw them away, they're not going anywhere.

On a more technical note, underneath the hood, the recorded items are all stored as .wav files too...

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#53

Post by softwarebeware »

eatmygodetia wrote: post #45

I feel like a lot of use plain text proponents forget that outside of ASCII and now UTF-8, lots of alleged plain text documents with diacritics or non-latin characters are at least slightly difficult to open because of their somewhat esoteric encodings. Plain text isn't as universal as it is often claimed, although it is immensely simpler than some other formats. But maybe we should all use monochrome bitmap files fo…

Yes, I feel this in my bones as someone who previously worked for a text messaging provider. Plain text has the deceptive appearance of simplicity, but it is actually one of the most maddening things to get right, especially if you intend to support the accurate transmission of said text to any possible text message receiving device in the world.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#55

Post by nayuki »

eddieroger wrote: post #32
c0balt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally the option to (relatively) easily transform markdown or richtext to another format is a great when you want to try a new tool and/or format.

That's the real secret, I think, keeping content up to date. Text isn't the only medium that can be treated that way, too. My family converted lots of analog audio and video tapes to DVD some years ago, and I immediately turned around and ripped them to digital, lossless types and stored them on a few hard drives and eventually a cloud backup. Will FLAC and MP4 last forever? Nope, probably not, but if I check in on t…

Nitpick - DVD is digital. When you said "digital", you probably meant "computer file based" format, as opposed to a physical disc format.

Similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682996

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#56

Post by thomascgalvin »

This argument feels ... not quite like a strawman, but more pedantic than I think it needs to be.

I don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand. The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible."

Nobody is suggesting you go through all of your photos, transcribe your emotional reaction to each picture, and then delete the image. But, if you want to view those same photos when you're fifty years old, or seventy-five, you're better off storing them as a JPEG than a PSD, and you're better off storing them on a hard drive you have access to in addition to whatever cloud they're currently occupying.

"Write plain text" is a shorthand for "use open formats." Because so much of what this audience does is test-based, plain text is the most common format we use, from source code to journaling, but that message applies to pretty much anything: if you lock yourself into a proprietary format, or a proprietary editor, you will almost certainly lose data over the long term.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#58

Post by brians »

“all the binary formats of the 1990s can be opened today”

Oh, sweet summer child. Scribe/mss. Koalapad. A bunch of Apple 2GS, Apple 3, and Lisa formats. Lotus Improv.

The points about semantics and authenticity are wonderful, but I think the presumption that all formats can be opened is mistaken exactly because those that can’t be opened become effectively invisible and lost.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#59

Post by dv35z »

aasasd wrote: post #12

I 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…

Can you touch on your org-mode journey, setup & current flow? I am just starting the journey - looking to have a fairly coherent notes/todo/planning/contacts/kb system, and have (portions of) it published out to a static website. Emacs is... something else.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#60

Post by eatmygodetia »

smasher164 wrote: post #51
eatmygodetia wrote: post #45

I feel like a lot of use plain text proponents forget that outside of ASCII and now UTF-8, lots of alleged plain text documents with diacritics or non-latin characters are at least slightly difficult to open because of their somewhat esoteric encodings. Plain text isn't as universal as it is often claimed, although it is immensely simpler than some other formats. But maybe we should all use monochrome bitmap files fo…

I think for a plaintext format to be "complete", it needs some mechanism of associating the language with some segment of text. Plaintext formats that don't acknowledge unified characters are just Latin-biased.

that's basically point - you can open an ascii file now because utf-8 is ascii oriented, but a utf-8 first editor will struggle with an old french text file for example. plain text has inbuilt biases which have changed over time, it's not as pure as simple as people say.
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