I agree. I have been using plain text for a lot of writing, from simple lists to forum posts or essays. If you find yourself writing more than a few lines in a forum then it can pay to copy that over to a plain text document. You can save the information for quick reference later and also if you have every had a huge post written out just to have your browser eat it then this can be a way of avoiding that headache. It is usually a lot better to knock out several pages of text and worry about the words themselves first. Later you can adjust the look. If you run out of time at least you have something of substance, whereas having one sentence with fancy styling is still just one sentence.
If I need to send some document I always send PDF. Almost all modern operating systems including mobile ones can correctly render it, all office programs can export their documents into one. If you need a group of people to work on same document, I think it is a good idea to use LaTeX, because you essentialy write plain text markup and later it is compiled to PDF, PS or whatever. The point is you can use same tools as you use for programming source code control and sharing (like Git repository) and still get a PDF document you can send to your customers or other people that need to read it.
+astroandrius While I think it is a good idea to use LaTeX when working with a group, I find it has a big limitation. Namely, other group members might be uncomfortable using it. And I am working in an evironment where we deal with lots of math/formulas, where LaTeX might be the best option.
+Joaquín Iglesias Yeah, that is not the best option for all the cases (yes I come from informatics/scientific field where LaTeX is common), in this case LaTeX is an example of how to use plain text to make presentable documents (compile into PDF). Anyway I don't think plain text will become standard, currently PDF is closest to worldwide standard of sending documents.
As much as I enjoy well-formatted and meaningful rich text (which I realize is sort of a rarity), having something that "just works" and can be written much more quickly without being bothered by the extra details is always very nice. It's like, say, choosing between, I don't know, KDE and Cinnamon (or Arch Linux and Mint, or any other similar contrasting pair of 'feature-rich' and 'minimalist') - sure, you can customize every little detail of how your KDE is gonna look, but if you just want something that is quick to set up and doesn't require a whole lot of effort, it's probably for the best to go with that instead. Markdown/BBCode + regular ol' text is also a good way to go since it gives you just enough options to enrich your writing without forcing you to customize absolutely everything to look presentable.
Plain Text FTW. I try to do most things in plain text. It will always work and be readable by pretty much anything and I don't have to worry about the format breaking or looking weird in a few years time. It's why I also love Markdown when writing content for a website. I can write/store everything in lovely plain text and then have it output on the screen in pretty-fied HTML.
The worst is email, when you receive an html-mail, reply in PT, they again reply in html, and so back and forth, and every time the quoted text becomes more and more obscured by line breaks and such
I quite like plain text. If I have to write something down, I tend to use plain text. A plain text editor opens much quicker than an office program, takes up less system resources, and tends to crash less. Plain text is very reliable, and will always work on almost every computer (I have never heard of a computer not being able to use plain text). Most of the writing I do is in plain text; however sometimes I am required to use rich text, or maybe I just need something to look nice. My solution for this is very simple. Write in plain text first, then copy and paste the plain text into a rich text file. This way I can focus on the content first, then I can make it look nice for submission or printing. I agree that it is important to keep things simple where possible. Have a great day.
Monospace text is a pain to read for anything that isn't code. Personally, I use Tomboy Notes for composing damn near anything (less fuss on the screen than even gedit and no file management to fuss with) and copy into whatever I'm using to post or typeset. I definitely agree that formatting options and the page layout are a distraction during the actual process of composing the text. Doesn't mean you have to give up any polish, though, on either side of things (your convenience or your reader's).
I'm a pen and paper game designer, and while I agree with your basic assessment for most content, I often need tables- they just give much of the information I need to get across in a concise way; a fictional city's stats, a character archetype or monster''s game mechanics, etc. That means I'm stuck with at least basic word processing capabilities. I use Libre Office at this point, and while I missed the bells and whistles of Office when I first switched to Manjaro Linux full time, I'm finding I'm fine with what it can do. I actually wrote my first book as a bunch of RTFs, so that can work as well, but plaintext can't do what I need to do my job.
I agree that the thing writers are hired for is the writing. People differ greatly in the styles they like. Some want giant print, some want big spaces between paragraphs, some like red or green ink. Writing should be handed in a disk to the client , letting the client make the final decisions on style.
As a user I love simplicity. And I love Vim. But if I were a freelancer, I would like to make the impression of profesionality. Sure nobody's going to follow you on twitter from link in email but people like those little things. The touch of design or stylistic choice is also something people strike on subconscious level. Nobody's going to chose you because of all the glitter but even though plain text does the job the best way, it might be a little too minimalistic. Of course, that also depends what kind of thing you're producing. It's like using plain Html. It does it's job best but very few people will like it. Another extreme I see these days are tons of animations and bad possitioning etc. Give people the unnecessary fluff but as little as possible.
While true for workflow / fucking around, I'll take a formatted block of text over an unformatted block of text *_any day of the fucking week_*. Furthermore, some documents *_require_* formatting (e.g., resumes, cover letters). Using plain or rich text should be handled on a case by case basis ;)
+thingyee1118 circle jerking over "good tools for writing" plain text negates the intended simplicity of using plain text by shifting the focus from formatting to messing around with text editors. Anything that supports UTF-8 (and perhaps line numbering) will do ;)
It seems you’re clearly a troll. I was not suggesting that Chris is a programmer I was saying anyone who is a programmer like me has uses for feature rich text editors / IDEs. Oh I am sorry was my "your" instead of "you're" too much for you? Was my message not coherent enough for you? That is a rhetorical question. I couldn't care less what your opinion is since you’re a troll. It also seems you have anger issues and like to come out with rude statements. Furthermore you misquoted me or Chris depending on who you were trying to quote. Anyway I shall no longer reply to you since I don't have time for trolls. -thingyee1118 03/03/2016
are you tired of all those annoyances word processing brings to you? are you spending hours over how your document is going to look like and are you thinking "dang it forgot the contents!" Now introducing plain text! The new way of editing. Don't make a complicated drawing of what you think. Just write what you think. Plain text. Because a thousand words are much more worth than a fancy image.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 91 | คู่เอก "คมอาวุธ vs อเล็กเซย์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/V0RkEfYFsgM/mqdefault.jpg)
The pursuit of simplicity in this complicated era. I feel you, bro :D
+Dhanar Adi Dewandaru 90%+ of people who use plain text for "simplicity" can't stop arguing over which is the best text editor ^
I agree. I have been using plain text for a lot of writing, from simple lists to forum posts or essays. If you find yourself writing more than a few lines in a forum then it can pay to copy that over to a plain text document. You can save the information for quick reference later and also if you have every had a huge post written out just to have your browser eat it then this can be a way of avoiding that headache.
It is usually a lot better to knock out several pages of text and worry about the words themselves first. Later you can adjust the look. If you run out of time at least you have something of substance, whereas having one sentence with fancy styling is still just one sentence.
If I need to send some document I always send PDF. Almost all modern operating systems including mobile ones can correctly render it, all office programs can export their documents into one.
If you need a group of people to work on same document, I think it is a good idea to use LaTeX, because you essentialy write plain text markup and later it is compiled to PDF, PS or whatever. The point is you can use same tools as you use for programming source code control and sharing (like Git repository) and still get a PDF document you can send to your customers or other people that need to read it.
+astroandrius While I think it is a good idea to use LaTeX when working with a group, I find it has a big limitation. Namely, other group members might be uncomfortable using it. And I am working in an evironment where we deal with lots of math/formulas, where LaTeX might be the best option.
+Joaquín Iglesias Yeah, that is not the best option for all the cases (yes I come from informatics/scientific field where LaTeX is common), in this case LaTeX is an example of how to use plain text to make presentable documents (compile into PDF). Anyway I don't think plain text will become standard, currently PDF is closest to worldwide standard of sending documents.
As much as I enjoy well-formatted and meaningful rich text (which I realize is sort of a rarity), having something that "just works" and can be written much more quickly without being bothered by the extra details is always very nice.
It's like, say, choosing between, I don't know, KDE and Cinnamon (or Arch Linux and Mint, or any other similar contrasting pair of 'feature-rich' and 'minimalist') - sure, you can customize every little detail of how your KDE is gonna look, but if you just want something that is quick to set up and doesn't require a whole lot of effort, it's probably for the best to go with that instead.
Markdown/BBCode + regular ol' text is also a good way to go since it gives you just enough options to enrich your writing without forcing you to customize absolutely everything to look presentable.
Plain Text FTW. I try to do most things in plain text. It will always work and be readable by pretty much anything and I don't have to worry about the format breaking or looking weird in a few years time.
It's why I also love Markdown when writing content for a website. I can write/store everything in lovely plain text and then have it output on the screen in pretty-fied HTML.
The worst is email, when you receive an html-mail, reply in PT, they again reply in html, and so back and forth, and every time the quoted text becomes more and more obscured by line breaks and such
I quite like plain text. If I have to write something down, I tend to use plain text. A plain text editor opens much quicker than an office program, takes up less system resources, and tends to crash less. Plain text is very reliable, and will always work on almost every computer (I have never heard of a computer not being able to use plain text).
Most of the writing I do is in plain text; however sometimes I am required to use rich text, or maybe I just need something to look nice. My solution for this is very simple. Write in plain text first, then copy and paste the plain text into a rich text file. This way I can focus on the content first, then I can make it look nice for submission or printing.
I agree that it is important to keep things simple where possible. Have a great day.
Monospace text is a pain to read for anything that isn't code. Personally, I use Tomboy Notes for composing damn near anything (less fuss on the screen than even gedit and no file management to fuss with) and copy into whatever I'm using to post or typeset.
I definitely agree that formatting options and the page layout are a distraction during the actual process of composing the text. Doesn't mean you have to give up any polish, though, on either side of things (your convenience or your reader's).
Err LaTeX, yo?
Is tex code is plain text too... so...
Vim + Rmd master race.
I'm a pen and paper game designer, and while I agree with your basic assessment for most content, I often need tables- they just give much of the information I need to get across in a concise way; a fictional city's stats, a character archetype or monster''s game mechanics, etc. That means I'm stuck with at least basic word processing capabilities. I use Libre Office at this point, and while I missed the bells and whistles of Office when I first switched to Manjaro Linux full time, I'm finding I'm fine with what it can do.
I actually wrote my first book as a bunch of RTFs, so that can work as well, but plaintext can't do what I need to do my job.
Chris, you are travelling down a path I started in about '97 or 98...
Ever try to insert an image or a graph into a text document?
how would this apply to e-mails.
thanks ,keep up the good work
joe barr
I agree that the thing writers are hired for is the writing. People differ greatly in the styles they like. Some want giant print, some want big spaces between paragraphs, some like red or green ink. Writing should be handed in a disk to the client , letting the client make the final decisions on style.
As a user I love simplicity. And I love Vim. But if I were a freelancer, I would like to make the impression of profesionality. Sure nobody's going to follow you on twitter from link in email but people like those little things. The touch of design or stylistic choice is also something people strike on subconscious level. Nobody's going to chose you because of all the glitter but even though plain text does the job the best way, it might be a little too minimalistic. Of course, that also depends what kind of thing you're producing.
It's like using plain Html. It does it's job best but very few people will like it. Another extreme I see these days are tons of animations and bad possitioning etc. Give people the unnecessary fluff but as little as possible.
I like Markdown files
yooooo nice video homie keep em comin!!:)
While true for workflow / fucking around, I'll take a formatted block of text over an unformatted block of text *_any day of the fucking week_*.
Furthermore, some documents *_require_* formatting (e.g., resumes, cover letters).
Using plain or rich text should be handled on a case by case basis ;)
I like text files also because of remote ssh.
Until today I did not know what the difference was.
everything you said as a problem from rich text is solved by using latex.
list some tools for writing plain text maybe. I use notepad++ or Gedit. Also pastebin and now thanks to you notepad. pw
+thingyee1118 I use vim/vi, others use emacs.
+thingyee1118 circle jerking over "good tools for writing" plain text negates the intended simplicity of using plain text by shifting the focus from formatting to messing around with text editors.
Anything that supports UTF-8 (and perhaps line numbering) will do ;)
Not if your a programmer, idiot.
thingyee1118 he said nothing about programming - for all we know he may not even be a programmer. Furthermore, learn to spell, dumb fuck.
It seems you’re clearly a troll. I was not suggesting that Chris is a programmer I was saying anyone who is a programmer like me has uses for feature rich text editors / IDEs. Oh I am sorry was my "your" instead of "you're" too much for you?
Was my message not coherent enough for you? That is a rhetorical question. I couldn't care less what your opinion is since you’re a troll.
It also seems you have anger issues and like to come out with rude statements. Furthermore you misquoted me or Chris depending on who you were trying to quote.
Anyway I shall no longer reply to you since I don't have time for trolls.
-thingyee1118 03/03/2016
are you tired of all those annoyances word processing brings to you? are you spending hours over how your document is going to look like and are you thinking "dang it forgot the contents!" Now introducing plain text! The new way of editing. Don't make a complicated drawing of what you think. Just write what you think. Plain text. Because a thousand words are much more worth than a fancy image.
thanks
mark down one love
Why couldn't you show it? This would be easier to understand the differences instead of some bull speaking.