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

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

#91

Post by Vivtek »

logifail wrote: post #81
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…

> 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. OTOH there a…

This is an excellent point. I've been trying to go back and fix that, by correlating pictures with journal entries or blog posts and the like. I wish I'd taken better notes about who all these people were and what they meant to me at the time.

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

#92

Post by mxuribe »

necovek wrote: post #89
mxuribe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...SVG journals for handwritten... Would you kindly clarify this? Did you mean scan in handwritten material but save it in a scalable image format like SVG? I'm quite interested but maybe i'm not capturing what you mean here, because i have not had my breakfast. :-)

Not GP and I have no idea if they meant this, but "smart" vectorization/tracing would be ideal when use of touchscreen pens is impossible (still doesn't capture the angle a pen is being held at, but we are getting close). For the state of the art, look up "image tracing".

Thanks, I'll look up image tracing.

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

#93

Post by lawkwok »

Vivtek wrote: post #91
logifail wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. OTOH there a…

This is an excellent point. I've been trying to go back and fix that, by correlating pictures with journal entries or blog posts and the like. I wish I'd taken better notes about who all these people were and what they meant to me at the time.

Apple Photos and I’m sure many other photo clients has a caption feature that lets you type notes for a picture. I haven’t hit into any character limits so you could presumably write a journal entry for each image.

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

#94

Post by lisper »

Vivtek wrote: post #91
logifail wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. OTOH there a…

This is an excellent point. I've been trying to go back and fix that, by correlating pictures with journal entries or blog posts and the like. I wish I'd taken better notes about who all these people were and what they meant to me at the time.

This is the reason I'm still runnins OSX Mavericks. I have a HUGE investment in iPhoto in the form of curated albums and photo captions. All attempts to migrate the iPhoto albums to Photos have failed. So I keep Mavericks machines mainly so I don't lose my iPhoto albums.

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

#95

Post by spc476 »

logifail wrote: post #81
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…

> 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. OTOH there a…

I have a ton of family photos where I'm lucky if someone scribbled the year on the back; a bit more lucky if it's the month and year. The number of photos where names were written is way far less ("I remember Bob, but who is standing next to him?" "I don't know.").

Also, the 70s and early 80s were a bit more orange than I remember.

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

#96

Post by paxys »

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 don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand

Pretty sure this article is a rebuttal to the front page post on HN yesterday which said exactly that

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

#98

Post by paxys »

briandoll wrote: post #85

I assume this is a response to Derek Sivers post: Write Plain Text Files https://sive.rs/plaintext I've been using computers daily for about 35 years now and I have a _lot_ of plain text files that I regularly use -- notes, lists, outlines, quotes, links, etc. Does anyone who has been around a while, have a large multi-decade collection of texts that are _not_ plain text? What formats do you use? How do you maintain…

My MP3 collection has been going on for at least 25 years and still works perfectly. Same for HTML pages (I have entire websites backed up from the early 90s). I still have Wordstar and Word 1.0 files which I can open and edit. I can't think of too many pieces of software or data formats from the last 30-40 years which achieved some threshold of popularity but have no support today.

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

#99

Post by mekoka »

logifail wrote: post #81
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…

> 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. OTOH there a…

Spot on.

A few years ago, when on a hike, if I came about some beautiful scenery, out came the camera. I'd spend most of the time capturing images with the device, rather than take in the landscape through my own senses.

Later, I'd look at those photos and noticed that they failed to convey a great deal of the emotional dimension. Now, I spend more time looking at the landscape, trying to notice all the details, and only take one or two snapshots. The idea of writing down my thoughts and reactions is worthwhile, or for practicality, maybe just audio record them and transcribe later.

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

#100

Post by jjav »

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…

That is why I tend to always keep files in plain ASCII, even though two out of my three primary languages need characters not in ASCII.

File longevity wins over grammatical correctness most of the time for me. I have text files going back to the 80s, so I'm glad I didn't use any fancier software to write them as they'd be completely unreadable today.

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