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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)

#61

Post by highspeedbus »

Obsidian/Markdown file structure is great for this. It can become a standard to "Offline Hypertext" format.

Despite text being fully portable, it is limited when it's needed to link a image or other files. People often forget how useful this concept is.

Html is not a viable option as it is awfully verbose for taking simple a note.

Markdown adds just enough semantics that is perfectly readable. From a hex editor to Microsoft Word.

We're in a somewhat critical moment, where markdown can either stay as it is, then dominate and become a godsend format of solid usability for decades, or a harmful feature is added that would slowly drag the whole thing down until the next Just Write Plain Text blog post.

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

#62

Post by jauco »

Real archivists (as in people that have archivist as a job description and work at places that have “storing data forever” as a mission statement) tend to store the data in multiple formats. The source + a few derivations. They also store a bunch of copies to ward against bitrot. And they periodically compare the copies.

Real archivists use a lot of data :)

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

#64

Post by aasasd »

dv35z wrote: post #59
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.

Eeeh, I already see from your description that your needs are different from mine, and Emacs and Org-mode tend to be customized by everyone to their smallest wants. You won't find a shortage of articles about Org, including here on HN.

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

#65

Post by jacobr1 »

causi wrote: post #49
nonrandomstring wrote: post #20

This essay is actually deeper than its surface appearance, about text versus other formats. It's about semantics and richness of content, although I am not sure Miris fully grasps what s/he is wrestling with. The author invokes the concept of "authenticity", and that's where it gets interesting. I used to set my students a question about information content in a class on the philosophy of procedural representation. W…

one might say that a great poet using only a few words might capture a landscape better than a painting, but if our culture drifts toward a visual one where poetry is no longer understood we cannot say that the medium itself degraded. That has little to do with the medium. If the painter takes as much effort as the poet, and the viewer as much time and effort as the reader, just as much information and emotion can be…

The medium can matter in both cases, in the sense that the medium is not just the format, but also the cultural context of interpretation. There can be subtleties in word choice that evoke shared stories, or word connotations or otherwise make reference outside the work itself. You can have the same references in the form of visual symbols, stylistic choices or more. The viewer/reader must make much more effort to gain that cultural context for interpretation, which may very well be lost or degraded over time.

I would posit that while a painting has can be very high context, that the tendency is for poetry to be even more context dependent. Transplanted outside its native culture, I suspect visual works (again, on the margin) can be grasped with more depth by the viewer than than a reader of the (on the margin) poem.

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

#66

Post by raman162 »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #56

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…

I got the same feeling as well. Open formats and avoiding proprietary lock-in is what the spirit of "write in plain text" is about.

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

#68

Post by freddie_mercury »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #56

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…

I think you've over corrected too far in the other direction.

"Write plain text" is definitely not a shorthand for "use open formats".

PDF is an open format.

Approximately nobody who says "write plain text" thinks putting everything in PDF is an acceptable alternative.

They don't even want you writing in HTML, for that matter. They want Markdown.

They really do mean something fairly close to "plain text".

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

#69

Post by Zak »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #56

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…

It's a response to this, which does advocate the use of literal plain text files where possible: https://sive.rs/plaintext

The author mentions converting to other open, text-based formats like HTML and LaTeX for publishing and writes:

> Keep your graphics files alongside your text files. But keep your text as plain text.

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

#70

Post by thomascgalvin »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #68
thomascgalvin wrote: post #56

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…

I think you've over corrected too far in the other direction. "Write plain text" is definitely not a shorthand for "use open formats". PDF is an open format. Approximately nobody who says "write plain text" thinks putting everything in PDF is an acceptable alternative. They don't even want you writing in HTML, for that matter. They want Markdown. They really do mean something fairly close to "plain text".

To quote myself:

> The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible."

For most collections of words, that means Markdown, not PDF. But if the words you're saving are a mortgage document or power of attorney, PDF is actually a better choice.

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