29 ms·

The future of education is plain text

• krapht 9y ago
  Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.
  • Numberwang 9y ago
    There are plain text versions for that as well.
    • syndev 9y ago
      Which example did you have in mind?
      • vortico 9y ago
        http://asciimath.org/ http://asciimath.org/ is the best one I've seen, by far.
    • grondilu 9y ago
      Not sure it's so simple. Is LaTeX plain text? Officially it is, but by the same standard so is PostScript or PDF. Truly the limits are blurry. Even assembly code has an ASCII representation.
      • vlasev 9y ago
        Well, plain LaTeX is quite readable, so IMO, it's good enough of a compromise. It does get difficult with a lot of parentheses though.
  • partycoder 9y ago
    Unicode has some symbols. But there is limited ability to arrange them freely. e.g: representing a continued fraction in plain text seems a very futile exercise.
    • Pxtl 9y ago
      Subscript and superscript are the bigger problem than fractions, also larger-than-one-line parentheses. Fractions can be aped in the ugly approach of dashes just like how Markdown underlines headers.
      • pfortuny 9y ago
        Matricial data is quite hard to explain well in a non-graphical mode, though.
    • com2kid 9y ago
      The "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics" standard[0] can do this just fine. :) a_0+1/(a_1+1/(a_2+1/(⋱+(1/a_n ) ))) Past that into an editor that accepts the spec, and you'll get something like http://imgur.com/a/7hBwv http://imgur.com/a/7hBwv Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful! [0]http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf
      • Pxtl 9y ago
        I'm curious about that one - was the space necessary?
        • com2kid 9y ago
          I just tried it out in Word, apparently it isn't. :)
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • partycoder 9y ago
        PDF and OOXML are also open specifications. Try to implement them though, you will run into a lot of issues.
  • ezoe 9y ago
    Then, mathematical notation should be simplified.
    • partycoder 9y ago
      What do you think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck
    • krapht 9y ago
      Perhaps we should also all learn Esperanto as well, since English is such an inefficient and inconsistent means of communication.
    • phailhaus 9y ago
      Have you tried? You start to run into trouble the moment you have fractions and exponents.
    • edtechdev 9y ago
      There's been some work on english language versions of mathematical expressions, which at the very least can help with accessibility. Handbook for Spoken Mathematics (1983) http://web.efzg.hr/dok/MAT/vkojic/Larrys_speakeasy.pdf http://web.efzg.hr/dok/MAT/vkojic/Larrys_speakeasy.pdf MathPlayer https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ TalkMaths http://talkmaths.sourceforge.net/ http://talkmaths.sourceforge.net/ Language and Mathematics: Bridging between Natural Language and Mathematical Language in Solving Problems in Mathematics http://file.scirp.org/pdf/CE20100300008_45591409.pdf http://file.scirp.org/pdf/CE20100300008_45591409.pdf
      • posterboy 9y ago
        I am not sure that is a good idea. The reduced entropy of our writing system, as easy to learn as it is, doesn't work very well with the density of mathematical formulas. If anything, I would favour more symbolic formulas.
  • pyre 9y ago
    If you distribute things in Markdown with (e.g.) MathML markup, then the reader can format that nicely for display, with PlainText / Markdown being the distribution format.
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      I think it really stretches the definition of "plain text" by the time you need a parser.
      • posterboy 9y ago
        I don't think it does, as I thought the title refered to the ubiquitous "view source" web tech compared to binary blobs.
  • Pxtl 9y ago
    This. My wife is a math teacher, and the piss-poor experience of writing mathematical notation outside of MS Word keeps them stuck on Word. As much as she and I love LaTeX's math notation, she can't get her departmentmates onboard with that kind of syntax. They need to maintain notes, guides, tests, quizzes, etc. and basically running a team OneDrive is really the only option because all the alternatives utterly fail a group of non-technical mathies.
    • AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      Try Lyx. It's a front-end for LaTeX. It's UI for math notation is very similar to MS Word's. (IIRC - I used them about a decade apart.)
    • com2kid 9y ago
      Fun fact! Microsoft Office has two internal math formats, one of them is Ecma Math[0], the other the other is the "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics"[1], it is a Unicode standard and uses only Unicode standard characters. It has the unfortunate property of being hard to type on its own (the integral character isn't on most people's keyboards), but it is pretty easy to read as just plain text. If you copy an equation out of Word you'll get something like this: ∫(x^2/2) [0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-and-ecma-math-omml/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-a... [1] http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful!
      • microcolonel 9y ago
        It's alright, somebody has to do it first. Though you shouldn't be surprised that a specification written by an employee at Microsoft is still primarily implemented at Microsoft. Maybe it could be integrated into the Unicode shaper (HarfBuzz/Uniscribe/AAT) with a language code for "maths".
      • skellera 9y ago
  • ape4 9y ago
    Use FORTRAN.
    • pmlnr 9y ago
      You need be a little more detailed with this.
  • SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    TeX users would like a word. Of course, that requires learning TeX notation for those reading it without an interpreter.
    • Pxtl 9y ago
      Yeah, go teach a 60-year-old math teacher to use TeX.
      • catshirt 9y ago
        why would someone with 40+ years of math experience have such a hard time learning a new notation?
        • bjt 9y ago
          Assuming they have something that already works for them, lack of motivation.
        • LunaSea 9y ago
          Because knowledge about maths is independent of computer and programming literacy.
          • catshirt 9y ago
            if we use a liberal definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's just as much a requisite for math as it is TeX. if we use a conservative definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's not a requisite for either. markup languages are not programming languages. most people have some familiarity with some markup language.
        • gizmo385 9y ago
          I don't think their assertion is that someone with 40+ years of math experience would have difficulty learning new notation, it's that LaTeX is composed of a lot more than straightfoward notation. LaTeX can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. While it's basic math notation is quite fantastic, it's the basic document formatting that I think would give most people trouble when learning.
  • pera 9y ago
    Actually, the standardization of most symbols from mathematics and logics that we use today happened in the 20th and late 19th centuries. In my opinion, with UTF-8 one can represent most formulas in a very readable way, and also many diagrams. But if more expressive power is required, plain text TeX is available.
  • k__ 9y ago
    AsciiDoc with inline LaTeX?
  • ptr_void 9y ago
    markdown (pandoc compatible) + mathjax mathematical notations within dollar sign is future proof. Easily convertible to html/pdf etc, easily readable in raw.
  • est 9y ago
    To be honest, human math notations is a weak type system combined with confusing single letter variables. Some kind of plain text math notation using numpy expressions would be cool.
    • xyzzyz 9y ago
      The single letter variables are opposite of confusing: they bring simplicity and clarity. This is not programming, where if an integer represents a destination address, you can meaningfully call the variable destination_address (or destinationAddress or dest_addr or whatever). In math, an integer is often just any integer, and rewriting formulas to replace "i" with "any_integer" will not make them any clearer. If math notation is unclear to you, it's only because you spent little time learning and using it. Mathematicians care about clarity even more then you, as they actually do indeed spend large parts of their lives reading and writing math. They are very quick to adopt new notation, if it brings meaningful benefits over the old one -- for example, the commutative diagrams and category theory language is now commonplace in all fields of algebra and topology, because it is much easier to draw a diagram and claim it commutes rather than name all the maps involved and write down all the equalities.
• partycoder 9y ago
  Plain text in what encoding, with what character set? We start adding implementation details and suddenly it's not as straightforward.
  • PawelDecowski 9y ago
    UTF-8, Unicode.
    • jancsika 9y ago
      And how do you represent line breaks?
      • davidsong 9y ago
        CRLF unless your audience mostly use Mac or Linux.
        • zlynx 9y ago
          It seems to me the only thing on Windows that cares about CRLF is Notepad. Everything else works fine with just LF. A lot of new Windows software even seems to ship with LF format configuration files. Especially games, probably because it is so common to have a Windows game with Linux backend servers, so the developers are working with both. So anyway, I'd go with just LF unless your software is Windows only.
      • nvader 9y ago
        For most users, you press enter/return on your keyboard. A lot of text editors will detect line endings when opening a file and use that going forward.
    • partycoder 9y ago
      What if you are using another encoding that already works for you? Same as real life alphabets and such?
• louiz 9y ago
  There’s no such thing as “plain text”. Is this UTF-8, latin-1, 7 bits ASCII…?
  • chaosite 9y ago
    It's UTF-8.
    • oconnor663 9y ago
      Yeah maybe there finally _is_ such a thing as plain text :-D
    • mmphosis 9y ago
      Is it carriage return then linefeed? or just linefeed? or maybe just carriage return? or maybe linefeed then carriage return? or maybe a different character or sequence of characters to denote a newline? I sent someone an important text (7-bit ASCII) file once. Much later, I found that they had tried to read it using NotePad. They had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to format it into something they could read. Had they opened it in WordPad, Word, a web browser, or practically anything else it would not have been a problem, but by default text files are opened with NotePad. Please don't get me started on tabs vs spaces.
      • ed312 9y ago
        The end-of-line character issue is trivial to solve with a very simple editor (e.g. many editors can figure it out and render appropriately). I _think_ the real issue is that NotePad is a rather basic (not dumb, just simple) tool which unfortunately is an OS default. Imagine a world where something like Notepad++ is the default bare-minimum text editor for a typical end-user OS!
• peterburkimsher 9y ago
  What about the existing "standard", PowerPoint slides and PDFs? Although most of my notes could be plain-text, any graphs or figures need pictures. ASCII art doesn't cut it.
  • pyre 9y ago
    Plain-text just needs to be the format. Checkout (e.g.) Markdown editors like Typora. The underlying format is Markdown, but it can be edited and displayed in a more visual fashion. With the text being in plain-text, it guarantees someone the base ability to just open up (e.g.) Notepad.exe if all else fails vs. trying to open up a Powerpoint '97 presentation with embedded RealMedia files in 2017.
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      You almost certainly can open PowerPoint 97 files today. Probably RealMedia too. Even better, going forward, pptx (and docx, etc.) are open standards.
      • rubatuga 9y ago
        "Open" yet there fails to be a compatible office suite that can render pptx and docx in the same way.
        • emodendroket 9y ago
          There are two answers to that. One is that to fully support these rich formats you have to have compete feature parity with Office, which isn't trivial. The other is that we're comparing to plain text, which doesn't even pretend to give you any control over how things look.
        • Spooky23 9y ago
          The alternative offered is Markdown. How can you say that it's ok for Humans to revert to raw Markdown, but unacceptable to open a legacy .ppt format in an application that may not render with 100% fidelity?
• voidhorse 9y ago
  As others have mentioned, once you dig into the innards and nuances of plain text representations and formats, things can get hairy. Still, I think the author is correct in that plain text formats are certainly a better base for sharing curricula, and for knowledge production in general, than something proprietary like word docs, pdfs, etc. I think markup languages like markdown which are both fairly easy to convert into other formats and deliciously human readable are the way to go.
  • pyre 9y ago
    PDFs are still ok though. There are many implementations of PDF parsers, many Open Source. It may not be as "universal" as plain-text, but it is definitely universal. At this point, I believe that all major operating systems ship with the ability to open PDFs for display.
    • syndev 9y ago
      I agree that PDF is effectively universal as a distribution format for graphical and formatted text. There are some cases where plain text is still nicer, like when trying to read documentation without an X server.
    • rsync 9y ago
      "PDFs are still ok though." They are OK in theory, for the reasons you state. The problem is the gratuitous use of PDF which we have all experienced - here's a common (pathological) example: Document author starts with plain text - no special formatting or fonts, no images, etc. Somehow their toolchain converts that into a PDF file that contains No text, but rather an image of text. The result is a big, bloated, unnecessary use of PDF that cannot even be parsed or used with anything but a graphical PDF viewer since the text is now gone - there is nothing but a picture. Of text.
      • canes123456 9y ago
        A PDF without text still kind of works. It not accessible which is a big problem. However, this happens when there is a mistake somewhere in the chain. This is all too common, but what is the correct way to handle tables, diagrams, formulas, images, graphs, links in plain text. There is no right way to do these things in plain text. You will eventually need html or pdf for education.
• anotheryou 9y ago
  even the article uses more :P Let's agree on markdown/rich text + non-interactive media (images, sound, video)
• rnprince 9y ago
  What important problem in this domain does the author think plain text uniquely solves? I'd say that the arguments aren't specific to education, and that they're also pretty weak. Remember that one of the major breakthroughs of the World Wide Web was that HTML meant documents were no longer plaintext.
  • azag0 9y ago
    You could replace "plain text" in the article with "non-binary", and it would probably make more scence. Markdown is also not plain text in the most strict sense. Or HTML is plain text in a vague sense. In the end, what really matters is how easy it is to build parsers and tools for a format. Being non-binary is a huge plus. I think that was the point of the article, and I agree with that.
    • mrec 9y ago
      I don't think anyone would claim that HTML was easy to parse, would they? It took decades for the HTML5 consensus to emerge. I like text-based formats, but I'm not convinced that "Being non-binary is a huge plus" for parsing. With binary formats you can assume that documents are generated by a tool, which is at least trying to be compliant with a spec, so barfing on noncompliance is more acceptable. With text you have to be prepared to cope with any kind of rat dance imaginable.
      • tannhaeuser 9y ago
        Parsing semistructured text as markup is a problem solved over 30 years ago [1]. SGML has the SHORTREF feature which allows custom Wiki syntaxes such as markdown, but also casual math. It works by applying a context-dependent (parent element dependent) mapping of tokens (such as the `_` token for markdown emphasis) to replacement text (eg. the `<b>` start-element tag). Within the `<b>` context, the `_` token is mapped to the `</b>` end-element tag, in turn, ending the emphasis. In combination with tag omission/inference (such as in HTML) and other markup minimization and processing features, SGML is a quite powerful plain text document authoring format. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_La...
• austincheney 9y ago
  What many developers either don't understand or refuse to accept is that when it comes to distribution you don't control formatting. It doesn't matter if that white space is explicit like white space characters or inferred from rules like CSS. There is a naive assumption that all platforms and operating systems will treat your text (everything is either text or binary before it is parsed into something else) equally. This is false. When when this fallacy becomes self-evident many developers will refuse to modify their assumptions in the belief that consuming software will figure it out properly. Sometimes that is true and sometimes will absolutely break your code/prose/data. Clearly that assumption carries a heavy risk, but this is just data at rest. When it comes to data moving over a wire the risk substantially increases, because all software that processes that text may make custom modifications along the way. You don't see it so much when the protocol is primitive like HTTP, pub/sub, or RSS (but it still does happen frequently). There are many distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely will mutilate the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why there are email attachments).
  • white-flame 9y ago
    Text is text, isn�t it?
    • austincheney 9y ago
      It is. When a machine modifies it in transit it is still text... just not the text you thought you sent/requested.
  • u801e 9y ago
    > There are many distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely will mutilate the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why there are email attachments). That's not entirely true. For email, the only characters that have special meaning are carriage return, line feed, period, and the null ASCII character. Other than that, you can transfer data via SMTP without any issues.
    • 9y ago
• edejong 9y ago
  Here we are, 33 years after PostScript was created and now the answer to "education" is plain text... Shouldn't we, as tech sector, feel ashamed for even thinking this might be a good idea?
• mwcampbell 9y ago
  Text is also accessible to people with sensory disabilities (blind, deaf, deaf-blind...). Hypertext is also fine, of course; I won't insist on "plain" text. But this is in contrast with graphics, audio, and video.
• AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
  Plaintext certainly seems more attractive the more docs I write. Over the years, with both work and personal projects, I've used every format from: - Notepad - Microsoft Word - PDF - Twiki - Various proprietary WSYWIG that compiles to HTML - JIRA - Raw HTML - Markdown (several flavors) With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the compiled ones require several hours of changing syntax, image locations, etc. I've been getting so tired of having to re-do stuff on different platforms that more of my docs are starting as Plaintext and then written in pseudocode markup for areas that I know will change on every platform (e.g. generating a table of contents, image tags, etc). Having just coded an entire website from scratch that was basically just documentation, Markdown comes remarkably close to doing what I want, except when the common format fails to meet my needs, which forces me to then have to switch to a specific flavor of Markdown in order to get something as basic as tables. The docs of mine that seem most resilient to platform shifts (other than plaintext) are the ones that are written in or compiled to longstanding formats like LaTeX or HTML. So perhaps my takeaway is, write in something readable that compiles to something widely available. That will provide the least headache.
  • tangue 9y ago
    Did you try org files ? Even if you're not into Emacs it might worth the try reading your needs
    • gyrgtyn 9y ago
      Pollen seems really cool.
    • JoshMnem 9y ago
      Org mode format is great. Pandoc works with all of those formats, including org mode. http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/
  • dom0 9y ago
    restructuredtext?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• minimaxir 9y ago
  Odd to see a statistics-focused site to emphasize plain text as opposed to formats that promote usability/reproducibility like Notebooks such as Jupyter (or R Notebooks, as discussed last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795) The post correctly notes that R Markdown files are plain text, but the benefits of such (version control) are not discussed by the OP.
  • confounded 9y ago
    What are the possible benefits of doing something that could be done using plaintext, using a JSON blob?
• bluetwo 9y ago
  A long text explaination of how a piston engine works or a short explanation and an animated GIF. Which is better? I would say the second one is more effective.
  • a3n 9y ago
    Depending on who's doing the advocating, plain text doesn't inhibit images or any other media, as any site with media written in markdown or reStructuredText shows. Lots of GitHub READMEs are written in Markdown and include images, for example. There are a number of image formats that are commonly supported, as well as video and audio. Once you've decided to go beyond face to face speech in the same language, you have to make compromises. Just try to minimize those, and try to stay within conflicts that have compromises, like line endings. I think starting from "authorship in plaintext," along with sharing plaintext files, would move things pretty far forward. (I guess there's some irony in there.)
• calinet6 9y ago
  And the future of operating systems is the command line. We deserve better than this reductionist thinking. Constraints can breed innovation; but they can also just constrain.
  • xj9 9y ago
    it is, but computer isn't smart enough for the future to happen yet
    • kmicklas 9y ago
      It's the Unix/text fetishizing developers who aren't the smart enough ones I think...
      • xj9 9y ago
        yet it is the unix/text fetish that forms the foundation for toasters, smartphones/watches, clouds, and supercomputers you'd think that a superior alternative would be overtaking this clearly inferior symbolic text system makes you think, don't it? not like people haven't been trying, but why is it so persistent? do you blame the fetish? why can't some other technically superior system win? WHY?
        • calinet6 9y ago
          Systems are funny. People do what works. Don't think about it too hard.
    • JetSpiegel 9y ago
      The computer is, PEBKAC is still the name of the game.
• simonebrunozzi 9y ago
  Which reminds me of my "biggest" crux these days: what should I replace Evernote with? Looking for a text-based solution, possibly open source, possibly encrypted, and possibly with sync.
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    Textfiles + <Insert File Sync Too> + OS Search facility. Or something like DevonThink.
    • pmlnr 9y ago
      text files + syncthing + grep https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-tools-for-windows https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep...
  • k2enemy 9y ago
    I'm in the same boat. I've tried dozens and my leading contenders are... 1) vimwiki configured to use .gpg extensions, then use the gnupg vim plugin. Great wiki syntax, easy links, transparent encryption, optional markdown formatting. Downside is no embedded images. 2) Typora with encfs. Great visual interface and the developer has promised some new features (such as a file browser) to make it more useful as a note-taking app.
    • jmcphers 9y ago
      +1 for vimwiki. No embedded images does kind of suck, but it has an excellent side effect: even if you use the wiki a lot, it never consumes a lot of space. That means it's perfectly reasonable to store years and years of data and have it all available, locally, on every device. The main thing I don't like about it is that there's no simple way to ingest data quickly from a mobile device.
  • jmcphers 9y ago
    Tried Standard Notes? Not a user myself but I know people who are fans and it sounds right up your alley. https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/
• JBorrow 9y ago
  I must say that I agree - to a certain extent. They (lecture notes) actually already are (at least in HE Physics education) as everything is written in LaTeX. They are just not distributed that way. I've been working on hacking together a demo of some stuff that turns those original LaTeX documents into a little (static) website. We've had pretty positive reviews from students so far - it's searchable (which is key), considerably more screen-reader friendly, and is broken up into manageable chunks rather than being some monolithic 100+ page .pdf! (https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/ https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/)
  • quantum_magpie 9y ago
    This site looks and feels amazing! Great work. Please share your conversion demo once it's available!
    • JBorrow 9y ago
      Thanks! Most of the stuff is already open source on GitHub - even if it is a bit... crappy at the moment. I'm attempting a re-write with a vue.js frontent and a python LaTeX -> JSON compiler. Here are the associated repos: https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc-preprocessor https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc-preprocessor (pandoc does not handle cross-references from LaTeX -> markdown correctly at the moment. Can be installed with pip install ltmd) https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the-middle https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the-middle (the website & dodgy compilation script). The docs for this are pretty rubbish at the moment but the configuration file (litm.cfg) is pretty verbose. If you are interested in setting it up and need more info, it's probably best to chat via email. It should work just fine already, and as I said students love it, but I'm not completely happy with middleman and the huge number of dependencies. Also: if you're interested in contributing to the new frontend then let me know, I'm looking for contributors.
• doublerebel 9y ago
  Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method. Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method. Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method. Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted. Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads. Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels. Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn't require all of HTML or even computers. Plain text: because it's good enough for metadata. My future and knowledge is in YAML-fronted markdown and YAML metadata for binaries. Let's take back our data. Look out for Optik.io.
  • CharlesW 9y ago
    Plain text: so when Optik.io melts down immediately from an HN "hug of death" one can use high-availability services instead.
    • doublerebel 9y ago
      There's nothing to melt down, there is no (public) website there. I can barely get a conversation started on this topic without HN's cynicism, as you demonstrate. But as evidenced by this and other articles, as everyone is getting fed up with the current state of data, people are coming around to the idea.
      • fredsted 9y ago
        > There's nothing to melt down, there is no (public) website there You might want to be a bit more clear in your communication. When someone links a URL/domain, you'd expect that there's something there. I mean, why not put up a splash page on your domain, telling something about your product (what is it? Something with plain text? A Markdown-based static site generator, maybe? Who knows.), or maybe a form to subscribe to a mailing list. Did you think people would put that domain in their bookmarks and re-visit it themselves?
        • doublerebel 9y ago
• IshKebab 9y ago
  Great let me just illustrate this mathematical equation with a diagram. Oh.
  • theoh 9y ago
    Yes, the idea that raw ascii or unicode text is somehow an adequate replacement for the capabilities of the printed page is completely ridiculous, but here we are discussing it. (And CSV, as recommended in the linked article, is a poorly-defined nightmare of incompatibilities. Not a good recommendation.)
  • pmlnr 9y ago
    Let me introduce you to LaTeX: https://www.latex-project.org/about/ https://www.latex-project.org/about/
    • IshKebab 9y ago
      If you consider that 'plain text' then I have some docx to show you...
• franciscop 9y ago
  I totally agree and I strongly prefer text. So much that I made this: https://www.libre.university/ https://www.libre.university/ for me and my classmates to learn some topics. Note: the English one is mostly empty except for [1], the main one is the Spanish page. [1] https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programming https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programm...
• ivanceras 9y ago
  Why stop with markdown? You can draw diagrams[0] with plaintext too [0]- https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/ https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• agentgt 9y ago
  I have not really found a viable plain text version to Excel that normal users can use. I have done some Excel like tasks with R, Python (pandas, and various other python sci libraries) and even SQL (postgres) but it seems its either a programming language (R, python) or a data format (csv). I have been meaning to look into what alternatives are out there.
  • confounded 9y ago
    R/Python scripts are 100% plain text. iPython notebooks are not.
    • agentgt 9y ago
      I didn't say they were not. The issue is they usually do not hold the data and present the data (ie WYSIWYG). The python and R only are the formulaic part. I have not seen a format where you can toggle the data or formula and see results as well as Excel does.
• lyra_comms 9y ago
  We believe the future of online conversation is plain text, too. www.hellolyra.com
  • lyra_comms 9y ago
    For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries to guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the modern Web. Lyra brings it back.
    • u801e 9y ago
      > For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries to guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the modern Web I wonder whether the indent really has any advantage over the blank line separation between paragraphs of text.
  • lyra_comms 9y ago
    Oh... and we have LaTeX support: https://hellolyra.com/c/343 https://hellolyra.com/c/343 (Scroll to the bottom)
• geebee 9y ago
  May I share a related vignette? I have a kid in middle school, and he has a tablet. These things are often pushed as "educational". Pop quiz: you walk by, and you need to determine, within a couple of seconds, if what he's doing is actually educational. Here's what you see: lots of graphics, whizzing around the screen -or- black alphanumeric characters against a white background Now, you don't actually know, but generally speaking, the second is a better indicator than the first. I realized this applies to my own work as well. There are parts of my job that I consider extremely useful to the world, and parts that I really gotta wonder about. If I'm looking at green or white alphanumeric characters against a black background (easier on the eyes), I'm probably at a UNIX prompt, writing code that is doing something very analytical, or writing SQL. If I'm looking at graphics whizzing by, I'm either trying to figure out how to get a drop down to repopulate with the right thing pre-selected in the latest javascript framework, or, worse, I'm so irritated with javascript frameworks that I've decided to browse the web. Again, it's not a guarantee, but I'm starting to consider a very general guideline: if you are looking at symbols and alphanumeric characters, the odds that you are building something of lasting value is much higher than if you are looking at things with elaborate UI elements. It's not 100%. My kid could be watching Citizen Kane and developing an interesting critical point of view. He could be reading 101 fart jokes. It's not a perfect match. There are worthy and unworthy things on both sides. But as a general rule, for culture and career - if you're looking at plain text, that's a good sign.
  • heartbreak 9y ago
    Or the student could be a visual learner.
    • nvader 9y ago
      The learning styles theory was recently called a "neuromyth" by thirty researchers in a public letter. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/13/teachers-neuromyth-learning-styles-scientists-neuroscience-education https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/13/teachers-n...
    • anthonybullard 9y ago
• Dangeranger 9y ago
  Plaintext OrgMode notebooks exhibit every benefit listed in Minimaxir's [0] post, and have the additional advantage of powerful editor integration beyond R code. Here is an example of using the IPython kernel to evaluate inline Python code within an OrgMode document.[1][2] More information on how to create multi-language notebooks with OrgMode Babel here[3] [0] http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/ http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/ [1] http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob-ipython-and-inline-figures-in-org-mode/ http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob-ipython... [2] https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython [3] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/
  • serhei 9y ago
    Org format is great, but the designs of many of its more advanced features rely heavily on the Emacs editor's ability to collapse metadata. Once you've built a file that uses drawers, tags, some spreadsheets, and several levels of nesting, the resulting file can be too cluttered with metadata to be easily understandable in other plaintext editors.
    • coldtea 9y ago
      Not using those other editors is an added benefit.
      • chongli 9y ago
        Not unless you work alone. When you work with other people, it's important to use a common format for the benefit of the group. Trying to force other people to use emacs won't win you any friends.
        • gkya 9y ago
          Org exports to anything including utf8 plain text with a nice style reminiscent of IEEE RFCs.
• EGreg 9y ago
  No, the future is interactive multimedia that you can rewind as many times as you like.
• vesak 9y ago
  I recently wrote a book using Libreoffice and Microsoft Word, because the publisher demanded it. The process took about a year. My own estimate is that we lost about 2-3 months to tool-related problems, without any benefit whatsoever. I have never in my 20 year career understood the point of word-processing tools, and never will. And those tools make money. That is wrong.
  • SamReidHughes 9y ago
    Would you have had tool problems if you had just went with Word?
    • mxuribe 9y ago
      To be devil's advocate, that's like the recipient stating something like: "sorry, we only accept manuscripts in blue ink, and not black ink (not for functional reasons, just historical reasons/habits".
      • dredmorbius 9y ago
        Brown M&Ms. http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
    • vesak 9y ago
      Yes.
  • a3n 9y ago
    > I have never in my 20 year career understood the point of word-processing tools, and never will. ... wait for it ... > And those tools make money.
• jancsika 9y ago
  > My answer to this question was that we need lecture notes stored in plain text files (like rmarkdown files) and data stored in csv files with direct links. When I think of lecture notes I think of two uses: 1. An informal reference/mnemonic for the lecturer. This use suggests a format that suits the particular lecturer (which may not necessarily be text, or even a digital format). 2. Potential answers to exam questions for situations where there are too few instructors (i.e., lecturer plus TAs) chasing too many students over too short a time for students to practice critical thinking. Are there other uses? If not, I can imagine standardizing notes across schools could be a detriment by streamlining "plugging-and-chugging".
• Spooky23 9y ago
  The future of <X> is the solution that best meets the job. For exchange and processing data (data != information), UTF-8 text with contextual formatting like Markdown, CSV, etc is nice as it is generally tool agnostic. But for conveying information (information != data), plaintext sucks. That's why Markdown is a copout -- the formatting still matters... and humans don't perceive markup coding as well as the rendered result. Humans do better with visual queues when interpreting written data. Formatting, typesets, bullets, tables, graphs, etc all help use process and contextualize data. If being able to reference information or data over time, where time > 10 years, you need to think about what you're doing. (Archivists do this professionally.) PDF is the quick path to address this for format-sensitive applications, as big & important institutions like the US Courts use PDF for their documents -- it isn't going anywhere. Big datasets are more complex to deal with... you have to decide whether the raw data should be preserved vs. the processed/analyzed data, etc.
  • wruza 9y ago
    Since Unicode already contains directions, smileys, combining marks, why not simply add VGA color plane and few [un]-bold/italic/big/sub/sup markers and forget about these shitty .docs, .htmls, etc? We already have a complex format, why not encapsulate at least simple formatting characters into it? These can be zero-width for rendering on systems that do not support colors. For those who want to point me at html, html cannot be rendered without a browser and created without a messing with tags, but unicode 𝐜𝐚𝐧.
    • Spooky23 9y ago
      As a human, what do I gain from this? Word is probably one of the most successful software products ever devised. There's a reason -- it solves a problem.
      • wruza 9y ago
        We could colorize and format texts via right-click menu in the text box (and even have plugins there like quick syntax highlighting of selection), instead of having to use closed un-interoperable solutions. Word is succesful, but you can't highlight syntax in Word, apply styles in MD, do WYSIWYG in HTML (cause fonts).
• Pulcinella 9y ago
  I would hope that the future of education is not plain text and lectures! Computers can generate powerful methods of interaction. Why limit them to being worse than physical paper?
• Sreyanth 9y ago
  The future of education might be plain text, but not for the reasons mentioned in the article. Also, I think something can be the future of XYZ if it solves the problems XYZ face currently. The current content for education is good, but is definitely bandwidth-heavy and is tough to maintain. But dropping to plain text will force us let go a few things that otherwise make learning more effective. I think HTML (or a WYSIWYG style editors - that seem like plain text, but can be powerful with images, videos, animations when required) also does the same thing like plain text, - it is always compatible (I give it to you that it takes effort to run hifi stuff on browsers, but still better than plain text). - is easy to mix and match - is easy to maintain (thanks to many editors) - is light weight (not compared with plain text of course) - is forward compatible (not possible when all browsers decided to not support HTML in its current state). I appreciate the thought behind bringing this up. I think writing something in plain English, which can then be turned into some super cool learning material that runs everywhere would be awesome. It helps both in solving the issues mentioned in the article at the same time keeps learning effective.
  • confounded 9y ago
    Disagree. HTML is a fine output format, but one that can always be generated from plain text. HTML is a poor storage format for the editable 'raw' content itself. Images, videos, and animations can all be done in markdown -- they're just references to files. Even something as small as the the MathJax CDN getting retired means that I have old HTML notes which are now 'dead'. If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, they're just not coming back.
    • collinmanderson 9y ago
      > If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, they're just not coming back. That's why I try to use HTML as the universal storage. It's not friendly to edit by hand, but with a basic, limited editor it's wonderful.
  • microcolonel 9y ago
    The problem is the lack of agreement on how to apply styles. Some tools do inline, some build stylesheets which use name mangling to format pretty names for CSS classes.
• textmode 9y ago
  https://www.simplystatistics.org/2016/04/20/data-repositories https://www.simplystatistics.org/2016/04/20/data-repositorie... Users want direct links and CSV. (my note: prefereably the CSV data should split into small, manageable segments not one enormous file that will cause most software to choke; users can concatenate these segments themselves if they want larger files - catenating is easier than splitting!)
• thebiglebrewski 9y ago
  Having written tons of curriculum in Markdown, I thought it was amazing! The remixing possibilities are endless and it makes all of it so much more programmable.
• confounded 9y ago
  It seems worth mentioning that plaintext is discussed here as the storage / source format. That doesn't mean it has to be the distribution / consumption format. One of the great things about something like Markdown is that it can be rendered to HTML trivially, to display video, equations, etc. Same thing for ebooks, PDFs, whatever (thanks Pandoc!). It's also easy to translate between formats (e.g. .md, .org, .rst, etc.). If a new format comes along that everyone wants, there's an extremely good chance that plain text can be rendered to it. The reverse is not true.
  • analog31 9y ago
    A thought occurs to me about source versus consumption formats. It would seem to me that source code should be the distribution format. That way, the recipient can choose their own preferred consumption format. When I first heard about HTML, described in some magazine article, it was touted as a way to give people a chance to have their own unique readers. For instance, a blind person might want to have their own HTML reader, that uses the hierarchy of header tags to help them navigate the document. Today, my impression is that HTML and its successors are treated more like a general purpose programming language intended to drive visual-specific browsers. This is why we have to create target specific web pages (e.g., mobile and desktop), rather than let each target's browser render generic pages.
    • gkya 9y ago
      That's nice and all but in a classroom you want to be able to say "open page n". Anything else causes terrible confusion.
      • analog31 9y ago
        That's a good point. I suppose there has to be at least a preferred distribution format that everybody has access to.
    • confounded 9y ago
      Multiple formats can be available for distribution. I think that web pages make a sensible default, but having the option to take an ebook and whack it on an e-reader, or open the source in an editor (e.g. to run code snippets yourself) is great.
• killjoywashere 9y ago
  Plain text should be the only option for medical records. PDFs and drop-in Word documents should be frowned on.
• Animats 9y ago
  The author doesn't mean "plain text". They mean some variant of Markdown.
• FabHK 9y ago
  One advantage of plain text formats that I haven't seen mentioned is that they're easily and meaningfully diff-able. You can run two versions of a markdown file or a LaTeX source file through a diff, and see what's been changed. Try that with a PDF or Word file or what have you. As I like to keep my files in version control, I use plain text formats as much as possible.
  • sedachv 9y ago
    That is an excellent point. I recently switched from Google Docs to Org files with Unison and ediff for syncing. Having everything work offline and on, over multiple machines, and being able to review and merge changes really makes things much more convenient. I now have multiple local and remote backups and no longer have to worry about losing my Google account. Another common pattern is to diff files that come in over email, or to diff when someone takes my code changes and modifies them by hand/rebases them. At this point I think that plain text files in a distributed version control system that can also import/export patches for emailing (like darcs and git) is clearly superior to cloud-based document storage. The promises of the latter have just not panned out - what we got instead is vendor lock-in and the Damocles sword of account lock-out/deletion/hacking. In many ways (UI responsiveness, control of data and privacy, service discontinuation due to vendor shutting down product/acquisition/bankruptcy, etc), the cloud apps are a big step backward from PC applications.
  • mrweasel 9y ago
    People look at you like your a damn wizard when you diff two texts to find the differences. I'm sure there are diff tools for Word as well, but almost no one use them, because they aren't aware that such a tool could exist. The average person run around with a smart phone in their pocket, a marvel of engineering and yet they still don't know how to use their computer to do trivial tasks.
    • ferdterguson 9y ago
      Word has built in diff. Review -> Compare. It's kind of slow though in my experience. Diffing plain text is amazing. I recently used it to diff a research paper I was peer reviewing that the TeX source was provided for. I felt like a wizard.
• gkya 9y ago
  Plain text would've been THE usual way to go for most things (1), but it's so hidden in major OSs, even in Linux distros. Many use Word or Wordpad mostly as a plain text editor becausr they don't know the difference between plain text and a word document. Also, there is thpage metaphor in those programswhich people like, because we think of text in pages. This is not that hard to emulate in plain text but not that straightforward too. People often share documents so pages and paragraphs must be equal for all (paragraph numbering might be a solution). We have the tooling fir generating convenient formats for consumption likr PS and PDF, but default tooling for plain text and the visibility thereof is what's needed. (1) When youcompose text you want to compose first style later. Wysiwyg mixes the two and you end up with crappy spelling and half arsed formatting most thetime.
• gglitch 9y ago
  I'm as great a fan of plain text as anyone else, but you gain a lot when you keep it in a sqlite db.
• j_s 9y ago
  I would appreciate any additional pointers to resources available in plain text demonstrating its effectiveness - the future predicted here should be readily evidenced by the past!
• voidfiles 9y ago
  Markdown is the new Cursive
• polygot 9y ago
  While plain text is compatible with virtually 100% of every OS ever, when I try to open a txt file on my windows machine it asks what application to open it in, since there are no default apps (Windows 7 and earlier.) This might make it appear that plain text files are a "special" format because it doesn't open up when you double click on it. I have sent plain text files to some of my colleagues in the past (so that there is a 100% chance that they could read the file), and they were unable to open them because of this issue with choosing the default application, and asked me what app they needed to download to view the files.
  • ReverseCold 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure .txt opens in notepad..?
    • polygot 9y ago
      It does, but sometimes the line breaks don't show up so it's all on one line with what appears to be tabs. WordPad works fine though.
      • ReverseCold 9y ago
        Save your .txt files with CRLF(Windows) line endings, not LF (Linux) or CR (Mac). Your txt files should now work on all (relevant) OS.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ajarmst 9y ago
  I don't care what you use, as long as Org-Mode can export to it and Pandoc can consume it.
• ppod 9y ago
  There is an excellent argument and guide to this here https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person-text/ https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person-text/
• ajarmst 9y ago
  I find anything but plain text irritating when writing (I dislike attempts to merge the creative process of writing with the only peripherally related creative processes of orthography, layout and printing). The WYSIAYG editor "revolution" and the associated explosion of opague untranslatable binary file formats did us all a huge disservice. My students learn fairly quickly that my warning that assignments submitted as MS-Word files will be deleted without comment was not a bluff.
  • albertgoeswoof 9y ago
    >only peripherally related creative process of orthography, layout and printing I think you should rethink this a little, constraining or adapting your medium will provide you with different results that can be better or worse, depending on your goal of writing.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• ptr_void 9y ago
  There are some hiccups like newlines that don't transfer too well between unix/dos in plain-text.
• Sodman 9y ago
  I completely agree. After spending hours trying to programatically read something as 'common' as a PDF [not all .pdf files are created equal, I learned] - I'm totally on the side of the "Give me the content and I'll deal with the formatting" mentality.
• mirimir 9y ago
  > Plain text is always compatible This person has obviously never been tasked with reading text files from old mainframes.
  • u801e 9y ago
    EBCDIC? I think that some terminal programs were able to translate between that and ASCII (like Kermit).
    • mirimir 9y ago
      Yeah, that. I was using Windows at the time. I finally discovered UltraEdit.
• yellowapple 9y ago
  The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if they even support such media in the first place). This means that these additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well. After all, not all of us are able to learn by just reading a bunch of text. Some of us need graphical (possibly video) or even interactive material as well. Such material is at high risk of being lost (see also: the abundance of interactive science demonstrations online that are implemented as Java or Flash applets).
  • u801e 9y ago
    > The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if they even support such media in the first place). This means that these additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well. Before MIME was a thing,I was possible to embed images in emails by including a block of uuencoded text in the middle of the email message (which was otherwise in plain text). I suppose that could be one option assuming the client program can render them.
• ares2012 9y ago
  For the first time ever, the comments on the article actually captured every thought I had - even the problem with contrast! I'm more impressed by the readers of that article than the article itself.
• jbergens 9y ago
  I think json would be much better than csv. At least allowed. It's still text and possible to open in almost any editor but much better for hierarchical data and more complex data.