The reason I use plain text is that nobody has made a similarly universal format for multimedia, and nobody has made tools for that fantasy format like Emacs and Vim. I'd love to use still and moving images at times.
The FOSS world thinks it's innovative but it's stuck in the 1980s. And because of that, ordinary people (and tech geeks) don't have a way to personally utilize and store their copious multimedia - it's all tied to some company's servers. For example, there's no good way to backup your Snapchat or Facebook page, or even better, to create an equivalent locally.
> The reason I use plain text is that nobody has made a similarly universal format for multimedia
Care to explain what you mean with multimedia? What is missing with the existing audio/video/picture-formats?
> And because of that, ordinary people (and tech geeks) don't have a way to personally utilize and store their copious multimedia
There are dozens of tools to organize and utilize your media-content? Kodi is widely used as I know.
> For example, there's no good way to backup your Snapchat or Facebook page,
How is this the fault of the FOSS-world? They can't dicate a company what they offer and what not.
> or even better, to create an equivalent locally.
Yes, but for what? What is Facebook or Snapchat in your mind that it would be even neccessary to create it locally? But, there are tools with similar function. It's just not simple to use, because such services are not simple by they their own nature and nobody, neither FOSS nor commercial world, has made it simple enough yet to setup services for any random user.
It's FOSS supposed lack of interest in multimedia the reason why closed gardens don't let you backup stuff?
Moreover, the FOSS world is what is pushing technology further, without FOSS you wouldn't have git, ffmpeg, 7z and other archiving tools. The reason why a lot of FOSS tools deal with plaintext is because it opens much more doors than you can even think about.
BTW, if you're an EU citizen you can get zipped html copies of your FaceBook data, and I assume of Snapchat as well.
I don't know about _moving_ images per se, but still images have been possible for a while in org mode. simply drop a link to the image file (possibly with an ORG_OPTION specifying image size) and you'll have an image displayed in the buffer of you plain text file.
(there are even packages for making a screenshot and dropping the file in the current folder and making the aforementioned link, which I use a lot during online lecture note taking)
Anytime I think about how everything is plain text, I
m reminded of TempleOS (http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-temp...), an operating system written by a schizophrenic man according to God's instruction. The fact that one guy built a system where everything is written in hypertext (yes, you can embed images in source files -- why not?), where *nix systems would use plaintext, shows just how far behind the FOSS world is.
My favourite quote from The Pragmatic Programmer is this one.
"Text manipulation languages are to programming what routers are to woodworking. They are noisy , messy, and somewhat brute force. Make mistakes with them, and entire pieces can be ruined. Some people swear they have no place in the toolbox. But in the right hands, both routers and text manipulation languages can be incredibly powerful and versatile. You can quickly trim something into shape, make joints, and carve. Used properly, these tools have surprising finesse and subtlety. But they take time to master. "
However, the impact of mistakes can be largely mitigated with good source control, a rapid rollback capability and good monitoring (Loggly, New Relic?). One I figured this out, I became more fearless with my coding.
Of course, good unit tests will prevent bugs also. I consider them a must for any large, wholesale changes.
Apple Notes is my go-to for “almost plain text.” It’s simple, instantly syncs across phone/desktop, and I can throw in bulleted lists, photos, PDFs, or whatever else if needed. I have meeting notes, to-do lists, journal entries, and god knows what else in there.
It’s not perfect - Markdown, or at least code blocks, would be nice, and tags (I think those are coming in the next OS release), but in terms of ease-of-use, I haven’t found anything close.
I am a fan of Apple Notes because they support syncing with Fastmail's Notes[1], so I could access my notes from iPhone and web, and my data is not locked into Apple's ecosystem.
But I got irritated with Apple Notes. It lacks Markdown support. It auto-converts my note from plaintext to rich text anytime I start numbering, bulleting, or pasting, without a way to convert the note back to plaintext. Lastly, my notes had no structure or hierarchy. They were simply sorted by last-modified date.
So this month I researched note-taking apps having (1) Markdown support, and (2) support for syncing my data to Fastmail. Because again, I don't want to be locked into Apple. I settled on 1Writer[2]. It syncs to WebDAV endpoints, which Fastmail offers. My notes are now files, and I can organize them into folders, all within 1Writer.
For now, I love it. Markdown support is great, including highlighting in edit mode, and I don't miss anything from Apple Notes.
> It’s not perfect - Markdown, or at least code blocks, would be nice, and tags (I think those are coming in the next OS release), but in terms of ease-of-use, I haven’t found anything close.
On that note (no put intended), I’d expect iOS 16 Notes to support markdown now that SwiftUI and UIKit in iOS 15 now have native markdown support.
I used to be a power-user of apple notes too. I loved how simple it is but I also missed having more functionality. My notes and folders became messy very quickly with limited options to organise. I also had to review my notes and put the action points into a calendar which became too much work. Decided to start building something better, https://acreom.com/
I started using Notes a lot at some point because it is just right there in the Dock, it has an attractive design, and unlike with text files, it is easy to just drop images into it. Problem is, now I have probably thousands of notes in Notes but as far as I can tell there is no easy way to export them to text format or HTML or any other simple format. I recently tried a third-party app that is supposedly able to do export from Notes to text for you but the exported text files lacked the original note last-modified times and a bunch of the first lines of the original notes were also missing. I wish that Notes itself made it easy to export to text files - I would be ok with not having images exported. It would be really nice to back up all my notes to plain text rather than being locked in to some sort of Apple cloud nonsense. Notes does have a built-in export to PDF feature, but it seems that you can only export one note at a time that way and also, the note last-modified times get dropped on export.
So a word of caution for other Notes users - Notes has its advantages, but if you ever end up with a large number of notes and you want to copy them outside of the Apple ecosystem, it will probably not be straightforward.
With markdown, it'd be so killer if you could just drop in tables from Numbers.app, or especially code kernels. I'm still looking for that shangri-la of "reactive Jupyter for the desktop" ObservableHQ is basically reactive Jupyter, and Jupyter-on-desktop can be hacked together, but I want all three.
I've been using Emacs for more than a quarter century, 99.9999% of the time text-only (whether Linux console, X terminal console, xterm, or SSH client) on a remote server.
My email client is VM, written in Emacs Lisp. I've used it to read mail for almost as long as I've used Emacs. VM (and ancillary tools, like Personality Crisis and mairix)
* does a great of job displaying HTML messages. For the very few that it doesn't, one keystroke sends the message to my web browser running locally.
* sends URLs I select (all from the keyboard) to the web browser
* opens images and attachments
* auto-adjusts the From: line of outgoing messages depending on the recipient
* archives messages to various folders using various criteria
* search my archived mail going back a quarter century at lightning speed
Of course, I can write Emacs Lisp code of my own to extend any or all of the above.
This, and also org-mode for organizing everything and org-roam and deft for personal interlinked knowledge base written in plain text. If anything ever happens to emacs or the packages it would be incredibly easy to convert all the notes into whatever format you like in a matter of minutes. It just blows my mind now that I think how much time I spend trying out other productivity tools instead of investing some time in emacs.
It seems like plain text has made a comeback among the generation that remembers Notepad and vim. The key thing is the focus on the routine and structure, rather than the choice of app or the styling. I've been putting together a collection of plain text applications:
Replaced a lot of awk for me, along with places I might have been tempted to use sqlite. Unfortunately never had much luck with the bash or c integrations.
+1 for plain text accounting. I'm using hledger^[0] to track my finances. I do use the web UI to submit information but I edit the plain text store extensively.
I've been playing around with the idea of "Google Docs for Plaintext" and have a working (but ugly) version using the CodeMirror 6 collaboration protocol using a Elixir-based server I wrote.
The idea is to have either single pane docs for just a plain text editor or split pane docs for Markdown, AsciiDoc, Latex, etc with the editor in one pane and the rendered version in the other. Doc editing/viewing would be collaborative with sharing similar to Google Docs.
I've done some research and I haven't seen anything like this which means either I have lost my Google-fu, it is a dumb idea or nobody has thought of it (in descending likely-hood).
Anyone have thoughts? Does this seem interesting/useful?
I use plain A4 paper, a physical clipboards and lots of colors(more than 10) and mechanical pencil.If I need to digitalize them for archival, I use same the Fujitsu snapscan automatic feed scanner that I use to digitalize books.
I can draw well, so using plain text feels so limited and constrained, rigid and not flexible enough.
Linear text and having to use a special language (markup) feels so clunky compared to a real 2D connection.
With paper you have eink support, A3 and A2 sizes if necessary and as big space as you need.
It is extremely cheap, does not need batteries, mobile and normal people understand it(WYSIWYG) much better than if you have to explain them how to install a Markdown viewer or worse something like emacs modes.
I am a lisper,fluent in emacs, could use it for notes and sometimes I do. I used Latex in University instead of Word.
But it feels so wrong for me. When I talk with artists in general they share the feeling I have. They will not use the keyboard if they could but their hand. For them programmers are just autistic not understanding their world.
Most programmers also can not understand artists. For them losing all the expression of handwriting and writing is just fine and for them the keyboard is sacred, and people should be trained in typing instead of computers doing the work for understanding human natural movements.
I do the same as you on math exercises. First, I solve them with a notebook and a pencil.
Then, I just use groff+ms+eqn+tbl... to get a PDF from a simple text file.
Also, as I use Unifont as my terminal font, the Unicode support is huge, really huge. So I can typeset math exercises with a simple xterm/st and a light PDF viewer such as MuPDF.
I fixed my editor so that it recognizes URLs, and underlines them. Clicking on one brings up a browser on that site. I should have done that 20 years ago.
No special syntax is required. It just works. I've since been adding URLs in comments all over my code, for references. It's marvelous.
It could be extended to recognize filename.jpg and filename.mp3 to display or play those files, too. Again with no special syntax whatsoever. It just works.
I used to use RTFD for all my note taking. Simple colored text options, embedded images, stored as a bundle. But when I stopped using MacOS(X), I found that RTFD support was basically nonexistent in Windows and Linux, and even regular RTF was pretty limited.
Switched to plaintext, never looked back. Simple, cross-platform
My absolute favorite hierarchical note application is CherryTree (https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree), but there's no mobile support, and looks like there will never be.
I migrated all my notes to QOwnnotes (https://www.qownnotes.org) synchronized with DropBox, and use any markdown editor in mobile. I would be happier if it had encryption, but even if it had, a compatible mobile editor would be hard to find.
Both let you mix text and media/attachments, but CherryTree is more user friendly.
I recently discovered Logseq and have been loving the experience of networked notes and markdown. I feel like this is something that has been missing from my workflow that I never realized.
File format is compatible with Obsidian as well so you can move your life anywhere. And you can back up to a private github repo so you can use multiple machines. I like Logseq so much I feel compelled to donate since its main competitor is outrageously priced.
Wrote my own vaguely Zettelkasten-inspired system because I wanted something that works at the command line and followed my own idiosyncratic (or idiotic) preferences. The data lives in my keybase KBFS mount and I symlink it into my home directory.
You build up a hierarchy of notes, but you can also cross-link so a note appears in multiple places. You can also drop arbitrary files alongside any given note. I expand it occasionally as I need new features; most recently I added regular expression searching and a command to locate "orphaned" notes. It's at https://github.com/floren/zk which contains the Go library to interact with the files on disk, and a command-line tool which wraps the library.
This is not really new, it's more a new generation of people who discover something that other have known for 20 years already.
The ironie is that the recent wave seems to originated from roam and other webservices, which are quite far from being plain text or even just being open.
Yep. In the late 90s/early 2000s I tried out a complex rich text databased-mediated notes program. And it was pretty great. It had hyperlinks, and inline images, and all sorts of fancy stuff. The one thing it didn't have was longevity. The company went under, the product depends on unsatisfiable depends now, and my old database of notes effectively vanished by 2005.
I've only used plain text for the last 15 years and it has been great. If I want images (or other files) I just put the file path to the images (or folder) in the notes. And since it's just a single text file called "notes" (now a handful of MB large) I can easily search through it with any tools I want.
I've got a folder on my family NAS called "notes." We store Markdown files and images in there. It's been a great way to organize loose information and media. Infinitely portable.
Wikis would come and go like mushrooms and I too was burned once, so I figured Wikipedia's data will never be abandoned and so have been using mediawiki for over a decade. Even if mediawiki is one day abandoned the migration tools will be excellent.
history, syntax highlighting, inline images, tables etc. Markdown would be nice - and there's an extension which enables that, but who knows if that extension will have a lifespan/migration-path like Wikipedia will.
The biggest downside to a text file is when you need to add “not text”. At least, “not ASCII”. Non-latin characters. Images. Sound files.
Sure, some programs will accept unicode as readily as ASCII, but not all. Formatting symbols are not well, or universally, defined. And definitely no consistent support for non-text items.
Of course, these are mostly minor non-issues on a day-to-day basis.
That said, I do wonder sometimes if the answer is HTML. Easily written, significant support for writing in text editors, virtually automatic support for the entire unicode set, lots of built-in markup, images, sounds, and movies are easy to embed, and there isn’t an OS that can’t display it.
I still haven't found a way to beat markdown in a private git repo.
It's certainly more friction than using apple notes, which I used to use, but in an extreme long term view, markdown plaintext files will still be accessible if Apple ever goes out of business, whereas anything stored in my iCloud is kaput.
If Apple Notes would let you write markdown and easily export/sync notes, I think I would use it again just for ease of use (especially when AFK). But on my computer I've always got vscode open anyway, so why not just have a window open to my notes repo.
I love plain text for my digital note-taking and I use a Foam [1] workspace now, but I've always struggled with diagrams. I love pencil and paper because I have complete freedom to draw diagrams which can be incredibly useful. I'd love a note-taking application for Android which lets me write text and then add a 'canvas block' to draw, and then switch back to text.
This headline feels click-baity to me. After singing the praises of plain text "for everything," he then lists all the things for which he's no longer using plain text.
> I’ve moved away from plain text in favor of apps in a couple places to help simplify things...any public, long form writing I do goes through the likes of Google Docs, Microsoft Word
The only places where his preferences are likely to be different from most readers is that he uses plaintext for taking notes, to-do list, and reminders.
I'm building an app (3D memory palace) and the save file format is JSON. It's not plaintext, but it is text, and structured in such a way that you could rebuild the app yourself if you wanted to - or still have access to your data should the app stop working one day. It also means it's trivial to edit the JSON if you want to add or remove something, or make mass-changes that would be impractical to do within the app itself.
At work as a web developer, I'll often facilitate CSV import & Export for Product to work with the app. This lets them use Excel, which they're already comfortable with, and removes me from the development cycle because now changes are just a file upload that they can do themselves.
Both JSON and CSV are great plaintext ways to represent structured data. Personally, I wish there was a markdown for excel, or some way of representing the entire capabilities (such as formulas) in plaintext instead of in a proprietary XLS. Hopefully someone has something in the works around that.
Proprietary is easy - just do whatever you want. But doing things in a way that lets users & other developers "yes and" your work is an under appreciated value add.
I built myself a little note-taking / wiki app that uses Markdown. The main issue I find with plaintext is that the minute you need anything like rich metadata on a document, it gets very clumsy, so the MD files are stored in a SQLite database which also holds any needed metadata.
I like the idea of plaintext as a least-common-denominator for many things, but it becomes difficult to use it beyond a small, constrained set of applications.
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
The FOSS world thinks it's innovative but it's stuck in the 1980s. And because of that, ordinary people (and tech geeks) don't have a way to personally utilize and store their copious multimedia - it's all tied to some company's servers. For example, there's no good way to backup your Snapchat or Facebook page, or even better, to create an equivalent locally.
[+] [-] slightwinder|4 years ago|reply
Care to explain what you mean with multimedia? What is missing with the existing audio/video/picture-formats?
> And because of that, ordinary people (and tech geeks) don't have a way to personally utilize and store their copious multimedia
There are dozens of tools to organize and utilize your media-content? Kodi is widely used as I know.
> For example, there's no good way to backup your Snapchat or Facebook page,
How is this the fault of the FOSS-world? They can't dicate a company what they offer and what not.
> or even better, to create an equivalent locally.
Yes, but for what? What is Facebook or Snapchat in your mind that it would be even neccessary to create it locally? But, there are tools with similar function. It's just not simple to use, because such services are not simple by they their own nature and nobody, neither FOSS nor commercial world, has made it simple enough yet to setup services for any random user.
[+] [-] tomcooks|4 years ago|reply
Moreover, the FOSS world is what is pushing technology further, without FOSS you wouldn't have git, ffmpeg, 7z and other archiving tools. The reason why a lot of FOSS tools deal with plaintext is because it opens much more doors than you can even think about.
BTW, if you're an EU citizen you can get zipped html copies of your FaceBook data, and I assume of Snapchat as well.
[+] [-] OrderlyTiamat|4 years ago|reply
(there are even packages for making a screenshot and dropping the file in the current folder and making the aforementioned link, which I use a lot during online lecture note taking)
[+] [-] criddell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharikone|4 years ago|reply
But I also guess the likes of Facebook make it hard to access "your" data on purpose
[+] [-] bobbylarrybobby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannywarner|4 years ago|reply
"Text manipulation languages are to programming what routers are to woodworking. They are noisy , messy, and somewhat brute force. Make mistakes with them, and entire pieces can be ruined. Some people swear they have no place in the toolbox. But in the right hands, both routers and text manipulation languages can be incredibly powerful and versatile. You can quickly trim something into shape, make joints, and carve. Used properly, these tools have surprising finesse and subtlety. But they take time to master. "
Quoted from https://flylib.com/books/en/1.315.1.37/1/
[+] [-] aussieguy1234|4 years ago|reply
However, the impact of mistakes can be largely mitigated with good source control, a rapid rollback capability and good monitoring (Loggly, New Relic?). One I figured this out, I became more fearless with my coding.
Of course, good unit tests will prevent bugs also. I consider them a must for any large, wholesale changes.
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
Fortunately, no body parts were in its path.
I've always been a bit leery of routers since.
[+] [-] dmart|4 years ago|reply
It’s not perfect - Markdown, or at least code blocks, would be nice, and tags (I think those are coming in the next OS release), but in terms of ease-of-use, I haven’t found anything close.
[+] [-] pmw|4 years ago|reply
But I got irritated with Apple Notes. It lacks Markdown support. It auto-converts my note from plaintext to rich text anytime I start numbering, bulleting, or pasting, without a way to convert the note back to plaintext. Lastly, my notes had no structure or hierarchy. They were simply sorted by last-modified date.
So this month I researched note-taking apps having (1) Markdown support, and (2) support for syncing my data to Fastmail. Because again, I don't want to be locked into Apple. I settled on 1Writer[2]. It syncs to WebDAV endpoints, which Fastmail offers. My notes are now files, and I can organize them into folders, all within 1Writer.
For now, I love it. Markdown support is great, including highlighting in edit mode, and I don't miss anything from Apple Notes.
Go, plain text and open standards!
1: https://www.fastmail.com/help/notes/usage.html 2: https://1writerapp.com
[+] [-] spideymans|4 years ago|reply
On that note (no put intended), I’d expect iOS 16 Notes to support markdown now that SwiftUI and UIKit in iOS 15 now have native markdown support.
[+] [-] jakeva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inferense|4 years ago|reply
Happy to share the access and get feedback.
[+] [-] axguscbklp|4 years ago|reply
So a word of caution for other Notes users - Notes has its advantages, but if you ever end up with a large number of notes and you want to copy them outside of the Apple ecosystem, it will probably not be straightforward.
[+] [-] tunesmith|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abinaya_rl|4 years ago|reply
[1] - https://simplenote.com/
[+] [-] easrng|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ylee|4 years ago|reply
My email client is VM, written in Emacs Lisp. I've used it to read mail for almost as long as I've used Emacs. VM (and ancillary tools, like Personality Crisis and mairix)
* does a great of job displaying HTML messages. For the very few that it doesn't, one keystroke sends the message to my web browser running locally.
* sends URLs I select (all from the keyboard) to the web browser
* opens images and attachments
* auto-adjusts the From: line of outgoing messages depending on the recipient
* archives messages to various folders using various criteria
* search my archived mail going back a quarter century at lightning speed
Of course, I can write Emacs Lisp code of my own to extend any or all of the above.
[+] [-] allarm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eliss|4 years ago|reply
plain text todo / notes combination [https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/]
plain text accounting [https://plaintextaccounting.org/]
plain text academic publishing [http://www.sitzextase.de/blog/2017/02/22/plain-text/]
plain text organizer [https://danlucraft.com/blog/2008/04/plain-text-organizer/]
plain text daily diary [https://georgecoghill.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/the-one-line-...]
[+] [-] flukus|4 years ago|reply
Replaced a lot of awk for me, along with places I might have been tempted to use sqlite. Unfortunately never had much luck with the bash or c integrations.
[+] [-] MH15|4 years ago|reply
[0]: https://hledger.org/
[+] [-] CodeIsTheEnd|4 years ago|reply
https://plaintextsports.com
Though this is presentation only, not editing.
(I made this.)
[+] [-] anthk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrepidhero|4 years ago|reply
"Can you send me the word doc source for that PDF so I can make changes?"
"Uh, it's actually markdown with this hacked together rendering pipeline."
"..."
[+] [-] dugmartin|4 years ago|reply
The idea is to have either single pane docs for just a plain text editor or split pane docs for Markdown, AsciiDoc, Latex, etc with the editor in one pane and the rendered version in the other. Doc editing/viewing would be collaborative with sharing similar to Google Docs.
I've done some research and I haven't seen anything like this which means either I have lost my Google-fu, it is a dumb idea or nobody has thought of it (in descending likely-hood).
Anyone have thoughts? Does this seem interesting/useful?
[+] [-] bumbada|4 years ago|reply
I can draw well, so using plain text feels so limited and constrained, rigid and not flexible enough.
Linear text and having to use a special language (markup) feels so clunky compared to a real 2D connection.
With paper you have eink support, A3 and A2 sizes if necessary and as big space as you need.
It is extremely cheap, does not need batteries, mobile and normal people understand it(WYSIWYG) much better than if you have to explain them how to install a Markdown viewer or worse something like emacs modes.
I am a lisper,fluent in emacs, could use it for notes and sometimes I do. I used Latex in University instead of Word.
But it feels so wrong for me. When I talk with artists in general they share the feeling I have. They will not use the keyboard if they could but their hand. For them programmers are just autistic not understanding their world.
Most programmers also can not understand artists. For them losing all the expression of handwriting and writing is just fine and for them the keyboard is sacred, and people should be trained in typing instead of computers doing the work for understanding human natural movements.
Very few people understand both worlds.
[+] [-] anthk|4 years ago|reply
Then, I just use groff+ms+eqn+tbl... to get a PDF from a simple text file.
Also, as I use Unifont as my terminal font, the Unicode support is huge, really huge. So I can typeset math exercises with a simple xterm/st and a light PDF viewer such as MuPDF.
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
No special syntax is required. It just works. I've since been adding URLs in comments all over my code, for references. It's marvelous.
It could be extended to recognize filename.jpg and filename.mp3 to display or play those files, too. Again with no special syntax whatsoever. It just works.
https://github.com/DigitalMars/med
[+] [-] Aperocky|4 years ago|reply
It's still mostly plain text, with just enough structure.
Can also be read straight without rendering too.
[+] [-] MiddleEndian|4 years ago|reply
Switched to plaintext, never looked back. Simple, cross-platform
[+] [-] ASalazarMX|4 years ago|reply
I migrated all my notes to QOwnnotes (https://www.qownnotes.org) synchronized with DropBox, and use any markdown editor in mobile. I would be happier if it had encryption, but even if it had, a compatible mobile editor would be hard to find.
Both let you mix text and media/attachments, but CherryTree is more user friendly.
[+] [-] riffic|4 years ago|reply
There's a whole subculture growing up now surrounding linked notes in markdown / plaintext and it's glorious.
edit: article needs a (2016) tag.
[+] [-] jerednel|4 years ago|reply
File format is compatible with Obsidian as well so you can move your life anywhere. And you can back up to a private github repo so you can use multiple machines. I like Logseq so much I feel compelled to donate since its main competitor is outrageously priced.
[+] [-] floren|4 years ago|reply
You build up a hierarchy of notes, but you can also cross-link so a note appears in multiple places. You can also drop arbitrary files alongside any given note. I expand it occasionally as I need new features; most recently I added regular expression searching and a command to locate "orphaned" notes. It's at https://github.com/floren/zk which contains the Go library to interact with the files on disk, and a command-line tool which wraps the library.
[+] [-] slightwinder|4 years ago|reply
The ironie is that the recent wave seems to originated from roam and other webservices, which are quite far from being plain text or even just being open.
[+] [-] superkuh|4 years ago|reply
I've only used plain text for the last 15 years and it has been great. If I want images (or other files) I just put the file path to the images (or folder) in the notes. And since it's just a single text file called "notes" (now a handful of MB large) I can easily search through it with any tools I want.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CookieMon|4 years ago|reply
Wikis would come and go like mushrooms and I too was burned once, so I figured Wikipedia's data will never be abandoned and so have been using mediawiki for over a decade. Even if mediawiki is one day abandoned the migration tools will be excellent.
history, syntax highlighting, inline images, tables etc. Markdown would be nice - and there's an extension which enables that, but who knows if that extension will have a lifespan/migration-path like Wikipedia will.
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
The biggest downside to a text file is when you need to add “not text”. At least, “not ASCII”. Non-latin characters. Images. Sound files.
Sure, some programs will accept unicode as readily as ASCII, but not all. Formatting symbols are not well, or universally, defined. And definitely no consistent support for non-text items.
Of course, these are mostly minor non-issues on a day-to-day basis.
That said, I do wonder sometimes if the answer is HTML. Easily written, significant support for writing in text editors, virtually automatic support for the entire unicode set, lots of built-in markup, images, sounds, and movies are easy to embed, and there isn’t an OS that can’t display it.
Just a thought.
[+] [-] chadlavi|4 years ago|reply
It's certainly more friction than using apple notes, which I used to use, but in an extreme long term view, markdown plaintext files will still be accessible if Apple ever goes out of business, whereas anything stored in my iCloud is kaput.
If Apple Notes would let you write markdown and easily export/sync notes, I think I would use it again just for ease of use (especially when AFK). But on my computer I've always got vscode open anyway, so why not just have a window open to my notes repo.
[+] [-] wcerfgba|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://foambubble.github.io/
[+] [-] ternaryoperator|4 years ago|reply
> I’ve moved away from plain text in favor of apps in a couple places to help simplify things...any public, long form writing I do goes through the likes of Google Docs, Microsoft Word
The only places where his preferences are likely to be different from most readers is that he uses plaintext for taking notes, to-do list, and reminders.
[+] [-] meesterdude|4 years ago|reply
I'm building an app (3D memory palace) and the save file format is JSON. It's not plaintext, but it is text, and structured in such a way that you could rebuild the app yourself if you wanted to - or still have access to your data should the app stop working one day. It also means it's trivial to edit the JSON if you want to add or remove something, or make mass-changes that would be impractical to do within the app itself.
At work as a web developer, I'll often facilitate CSV import & Export for Product to work with the app. This lets them use Excel, which they're already comfortable with, and removes me from the development cycle because now changes are just a file upload that they can do themselves.
Both JSON and CSV are great plaintext ways to represent structured data. Personally, I wish there was a markdown for excel, or some way of representing the entire capabilities (such as formulas) in plaintext instead of in a proprietary XLS. Hopefully someone has something in the works around that.
Proprietary is easy - just do whatever you want. But doing things in a way that lets users & other developers "yes and" your work is an under appreciated value add.
[+] [-] genjipress|4 years ago|reply
I like the idea of plaintext as a least-common-denominator for many things, but it becomes difficult to use it beyond a small, constrained set of applications.
[+] [-] criddell|4 years ago|reply