6 ms·

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 do

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?
      - pyre 9y ago
        No one ever said that humans need to write raw Markdown. Take a look at Typora as an example Markdown editor. Raw Markdown would be the fallback scenario, which is still readable/grok-able. docx/pptx/xlsx don't have such a fallback scenario.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        There are countless software packages that can edit and display Office XML files besides just the Office package, so I'd think the fallback scenario is using one of those.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  Typora is surprisingly pleasant to use, so +1 for that.
gech 9y ago
Are you stating that there are people that like pdfs?
- Cursuviam 9y ago
  It's my preferred reading format for sheet music.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  If your purpose is to exactly represent a printed page it's a great format.
- nur0n 9y ago
  pdf is my prefered format of storing information, after markdown and source code, of course. It allows me to portably crystallize visual information without resorting to images which completely wipe out textual information.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Given a sufficient device it's actually a fairly decent format. The problem is that that device has to relatively closely correspond to printed paper sizes, within a factor of about 75% - 125%. What PDF offers is a consistent, space-persistent, formatted output. For reading longer works, it actually does matter to me where a passage appears on a page, or within a work. Spatial memory is important that way. I read a lot of material, in a lot of different formats: paged text (manpages, console-mode browsers), formatted HTML, ePubs, DJVU, image-scanned books. If I'm reading on a largish (9-10") tablet, PDF in one-page-up format is actually really good. Fills the screen, is almost always suitably readable. Scans of old books (thank you, Internet Archive and Google) in particular are a delight -- there's something about reading a century-plus-old library copy with markings and (hopefully not too much) marginalia, as well as the original typesetting and images. The main problem I have with fluid formats ultimately is their fluidity. I realise that that's perverse, and that there are times when it's a real benefit, but again, I can't seem to get away from that spatial memory thing. If I'm extracting content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown, DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story. The ability to spin out formats on demand would be an ideal. I'm looking into ways of doing that.
TuringTest 9y ago
If you're going to propose an standard for graphs and figures, please make it SVG. It's hard to find tools for editing PDF that would support text and graphics, and PowerPoint exists only as a proprietary closed format.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  False. http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    What does that link intend to prove? The Office Open XML standard relies heavily on hidden implementation details of the Microsoft Office software suite.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      "The specification is inadequate to imitate Office" is a different claim from "it only exists as a proprietary, closed format."
      - TuringTest 9y ago
        From what I've heard, the MS Office applications do not even entirely comply with the published specification. So OOXML is still not a definition of the format with which PowerPoint stores its files.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        So they're just like every other standard on the Web, basically.
        TuringTest 9y ago
emodendroket 9y ago
I think the concerns about them are entirely theoretical, yes.

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?
    - pyre 9y ago
      No one ever said that humans need to write raw Markdown. Take a look at Typora as an example Markdown editor. Raw Markdown would be the fallback scenario, which is still readable/grok-able. docx/pptx/xlsx don't have such a fallback scenario.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        There are countless software packages that can edit and display Office XML files besides just the Office package, so I'd think the fallback scenario is using one of those.
pmlnr 9y ago
Typora is surprisingly pleasant to use, so +1 for that.

gech 9y ago

Are you stating that there are people that like pdfs?

Cursuviam 9y ago
It's my preferred reading format for sheet music.
emodendroket 9y ago
If your purpose is to exactly represent a printed page it's a great format.
nur0n 9y ago
pdf is my prefered format of storing information, after markdown and source code, of course. It allows me to portably crystallize visual information without resorting to images which completely wipe out textual information.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Given a sufficient device it's actually a fairly decent format. The problem is that that device has to relatively closely correspond to printed paper sizes, within a factor of about 75% - 125%. What PDF offers is a consistent, space-persistent, formatted output. For reading longer works, it actually does matter to me where a passage appears on a page, or within a work. Spatial memory is important that way. I read a lot of material, in a lot of different formats: paged text (manpages, console-mode browsers), formatted HTML, ePubs, DJVU, image-scanned books. If I'm reading on a largish (9-10") tablet, PDF in one-page-up format is actually really good. Fills the screen, is almost always suitably readable. Scans of old books (thank you, Internet Archive and Google) in particular are a delight -- there's something about reading a century-plus-old library copy with markings and (hopefully not too much) marginalia, as well as the original typesetting and images. The main problem I have with fluid formats ultimately is their fluidity. I realise that that's perverse, and that there are times when it's a real benefit, but again, I can't seem to get away from that spatial memory thing. If I'm extracting content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown, DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story. The ability to spin out formats on demand would be an ideal. I'm looking into ways of doing that.

TuringTest 9y ago

If you're going to propose an standard for graphs and figures, please make it SVG. It's hard to find tools for editing PDF that would support text and graphics, and PowerPoint exists only as a proprietary closed format.

emodendroket 9y ago
False. http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...
- TuringTest 9y ago
  What does that link intend to prove? The Office Open XML standard relies heavily on hidden implementation details of the Microsoft Office software suite.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    "The specification is inadequate to imitate Office" is a different claim from "it only exists as a proprietary, closed format."
    - TuringTest 9y ago
      From what I've heard, the MS Office applications do not even entirely comply with the published specification. So OOXML is still not a definition of the format with which PowerPoint stores its files.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        So they're just like every other standard on the Web, basically.
        TuringTest 9y ago

emodendroket 9y ago

I think the concerns about them are entirely theoretical, yes.