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The Plain Text Project

498 points by mmillin 7y ago

ggm 7y ago
Except it's html. They didn't serve text/plain. I do get that thinking as words helps but isn't org mode or markdown plaintext?
- oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
  That would be text/markdown :) Although serving markdown as text/plain should be totally fine if the client is a web browser. It would be incredibly useful if web browsers rendered text/markdown natively, though - mine renders PDFs, so I think the precedant's there.
  - ggm 7y ago
    I too would welcome this and text/org-mode
hprotagonist 7y ago
not to be That Guy, but: all those things listed under each bullet are very nearly just org-mode documentation chapter titles. Org is very clearly Just Plain Text, but there is a nontrivial caveat, which is "... backed by LISP, so text is also data is also code is also text". Most of the real goodies (babel, refile, capture) will not (ever, probably) work outside of emacs. I agree that plain text is rad, though!
- merlincorey 7y ago
  Furthermore, the templates provided are basically proto-org-mode syntax probably re-invented by someone who has never seen org-mode in the first place. To me, that speaks to how natural much of (but certainly not all of) org-mode syntax is.
ses4j 7y ago
I never thought of plaintext as a way of life, but I think I agree with it in principle (as many others on here probably do.) I didn't know I was part of a movement, but I did write my own simple (and open source) hours tracking/invoicing tool on plaintext principles: https://github.com/ses4j/ts https://github.com/ses4j/ts
geraldbauer 7y ago
Great collection of tools and articles. Plain text is also a great (and the best) choice for datasets. Do NOT use JSON, YAML and friends, for example, as your input format but use plain text with a custom parser to import into any SQL database and than you can easily export to JSON, YAML and friends. See the football.db and the Premier League or World Cup match schedule as living examples [1]. [1]: https://github.com/openfootball https://github.com/openfootball
- grenoire 7y ago
  As great as such formats are for human consumption, they should come with reference specifications and parser implementations to be usable.
  - geraldbauer 7y ago
    You might like the Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Format Specifications (and Tests) org @ https://github.com/csvspecs https://github.com/csvspecs Trying to improve the world's most popular plain text format (and - surprise, surprise - nobody cares).
- xg15 7y ago
  If your dataset is mostly a list of strings, sure. If it's anything more structured, why exactly? I'd argue that using "plaintext" for structured data (a.k.a, inventing your own data representation) will set up both you and the users of your dataset for unnecessary pain dealing with unescaping and parsing.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    if the dataset is "more structured" you can try to simplify this structure for great gains. As a byproduct, you get to use text files for the data.
    - xg15 7y ago
      Could you give an example?
jahbrewski 7y ago
I really feel like this site should be in plain text.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Tried curl -H 'Accept: text/plain' https://plaintextproject.online/ and was disappointed with HTML...
- hinkley 7y ago
  All I see is text and a few links. Are you claiming that typesetting doesn’t count as plain text? If so then what do you call books?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Books don't have links.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      Sometimes I forget that even HN has people who will happily argue about absolutely anything. Plain text is printed in a physical surface by mechanical or manual means, but you don’t seem to have a problem with pixels. Footnotes, figures, and bibliographies all refer to material out of time and space. Frequently you had to bust ass to make use of them but they were there. And they were replaced with something demonstrably better. So you want a website about plain text with no hypertext at all where you have to copy and paste URLs in order to get past the landing page, in order to have a plain text experience. Maybe bullet journals should only be described in bullet journals and embroidery instructions be embroidered onto fabric. > some of you are thinking, “but John, you just said there’s no difference between geeks and nerds,” and to you I say, “shut up nerds.” - John Hodgeman
      - anamexis 7y ago
        The point is that this site is literally about plain text files, i.e. not using a markup format or other adornments.
pletnes 7y ago
Great find! But why on earth is there no mention of git, or the other VCSes? IMHO they’re a huge reason for using plaintext for more purposes.
gojomo 7y ago
And yet, the site uses a favicon of a typewriter (https://plaintextproject.online/favicon.png https://plaintextproject.online/favicon.png). It's so hard to be pure in this world!
- msla 7y ago
  It's something I don't like about what programmers tend to mean when they say plain text: Plain text isn't the same as ASCII. It isn't the same as Latin-1 or some other eight-bit encoding. UTF-8 is plain text. UTF-16 is plain text, too, but UTF-8 is better to use on the Internet. My point is that you can go well beyond the Latin alphabet and still be in the world of plain text. You can have correct quotes, as opposed to the apostrophe-quotes typewriters saddled us with, and still be producing plain text. There's nothing inherently "fancy" about using the writing systems most of the people on Earth are fluent in, and, thanks to Unicode, there's many fewer compatibility problems.
  - peterbhnews 7y ago
    You say this but I bet most of the people who style themselves plain text purist really do mean ASCII.
tubbs 7y ago
I recently just upped my StandardNotes subscription (the Black Friday ad is still active), and I'm now locked in for ~5.5 years. It's a very plain-text webapp/mobile app that aims to be simple and long-lasting, yet feature-full by means of optional extensions. It's not perfect, but I've been using it for a few months now without any data loss/major bugs encountered, and was excited to use it to ditch Google Keep/Google Authenticator. It's amazing what you can do with simple text, especially with a Markdown-supporting editor.
- philips 7y ago
  I tried to love standard notes but I had several times where note contents were overwritten or missing between machines. I looked at the API for syncing and it did not give me confidence. Using pass + git now. Works great.
  - mobitar 7y ago
    Do you recall when this was? This kind of feedback is highly unusual for us. Most users love SN precisely for its reliable sync. Our syncing engine underwent large-scale changes in June/July of this year to solve an edge case with opening out-of-date clients. If you experienced any issues after this date with updated clients, I'd be very surprised, but would love to hear more if you can spare a moment. The only other issue we have heard of precisely one other time has to do with Firefox pinned tabs + some assortment of Firefox browser extensions. To be clear, any reproducible issues with syncing are 100% fixed as quickly as possible. Lastly, regarding our API for syncing, while our encryption specification is described in plain text detail, you'd have to inspect our source to see how syncing works.
    - jaydouken 7y ago
      Is it possible to use VIM as a text editor in the terminal with SN? Or are users required to use a text editors supported by SN? This seems like an application I'm looking for but I can't ditch my vimrc and plugins
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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loh 7y ago
I think more and more people are realizing that simpler is almost always better, and not only when it comes to software. I've found that this approach works best for nearly all aspects of life. The hard part is simplifying complex things. We have so many odd pieces (usually due to legacy reasons or conflicting designs) which don't quite fit into an otherwise simple solution. Plain text could probably work for most forms of communication and data formats. It's when you need to separate, categorize, and interact with the information that you need more than plain text. This website briefly addresses plain text's shortcomings, so to add to that, in terms of software UX, I would say plain text should be used as a starting point while adding interactive elements (e.g., buttons) and layouts only as necessary. By layouts I mean visual separation of categorized information via whitespace and/or color variations. I've found that this results in extremely intuitive interfaces that are both easy for users to digest and developers to maintain. We seem to be following a trend where "winning" software has little to no learning curves, as they are becoming the simplest possible tools for daily use. I'm not sure if it's a result of the fact that most people are tech savvy, or if we're just getting better at building software and designing interfaces. It's probably some combination of both.
- solipsism 7y ago
  I'm skeptical any such trend exists. Are you sure you're not misinterpreting your anecdotal experience? I'm not sure if it's a result of the fact that most people are tech savvy Most people aren't tech savvy. Again, maybe you are extrapolating inappropriately from your personal experiences, the people you hang out with, etc?
  - loh 7y ago
    I'm mostly referring to the younger generation(s) and the apps most widely used by them. Think of the simplicity of applications like Instagram and Snapchat. There isn't much to the interfaces for most user interaction - some images, videos, text, an input or two, and a few buttons. There may be some advanced touch interactions (pinching and swiping), but overall, applications these days tend to be relatively simple. Older generations definitely struggle using software though, so I think they may be a good metric for how simple and easy to use software can be. Anecdotal experiences could certainly play a role in my opinion here, but I do think I've recognized a pattern over the past couple of decades where winning software interfaces have made a transition from being overly designed and complex to much simpler designs with (usually) predictable interactive element positions and flows. Think of what software was like when there were "shiny" buttons and small text everywhere with confusing visual flow, and then think about what it is now, usually composed of flat buttons (e.g., the "material-ui" standard) and easy to digest visual flow with predictable interactions. This transition is likely a natural result of figuring out over time what works best and what doesn't. By tech savvy people, I mean the end users who interact with software on a regular basis. These people (i.e., most people in the modern world, a number steadily increasing) will naturally gravitate towards the easy-to-use, predictable design patterns to which they've become accustomed.
tabtab 7y ago
I've been kicking around the idea of a plain-text GUI to demonstrate what a "GUI Markup Standard" may work like. Making a graphics-enabled version is a lot work for a demo. VB-classic also had a text-based mouse-able GUI option for a short while, but it never took off. It was based on ANSI escape sequences for DOS consoles, which is sort of in-between "pure text" and graphics. A pure-text GUI is also doable, but console approach is probably more compact because it can use colors as cues instead of symbols. An alternative or supplement to a markup standard is a text-based screen designer. Both a pure-ASCII and console text UI can be defined using plain text for semi-WYSIWYG designing. Rough example: $ Employee Edit Form * _thisLine.title $ $ Last: [#last ] First: [#firstname] MI: [#MI] * #last:fullname=last_name, required=true; #MI:fullanem=mid_initl $ $ {#Save} {#Cancel} {#Other} * #Save:click=_thisForm.submit; #Cancel:click= _thisForm.close * #Other:click=specialProcedureX(), display="Other Options" Symbols and conventions: $ = start of template line * = start of definition or command line [...] = input widget template {...} = button template # = start of reference name. "fullName=" = use if actual database name is diff from reference name ; = definition or command separator "type=" = to define widget type, such as SELECT (not shown) "display=" use if actual label is different from reference label Notes: "type=label" can be used to make bold or italics. The definition line(s) don't have to follow the template lines in most cases. One can thus optionally put most definition lines at the bottom. It may make interpreting the template easier for some people.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Interactive shell libraries exist. They are quite common for Unix oriented tools. Might be possible to reimplement the same API for a GUI
  - tabtab 7y ago
    An example product? Note that I was talking about two different things: a GUI markup standard (probably XML based), and an ASCII WYSIWYG GUI designer. I'll make the distinction clearer in an edit.
kirubakaran 7y ago
I use this plain text planner / calendar every day and I love it, if I can say so myself, since I made it too. I've been using it for a few years now and I can say that it has definitely made me more productive. https://crushentropy.com/ https://crushentropy.com/ You can plan and log your day in plain text and it visualizes your schedule. Markdown for planning, if you will.
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  Check out NotePlan too.
- Madeindjs 7y ago
  Sounds great. Did you open source the parser?
  - kirubakaran 7y ago
    Thanks! I haven't yet, but I'll work on releasing the code since there is interest :-) My email is in my profile. If you email me, I can let you know when it is available.
- Cub3 7y ago
  This is awesome, have been looking for something like this for a while, wondering if there's a way to export it to and from my ical
  - kirubakaran 7y ago
    Thanks, I'd be happy to implement that. Can you please email me? My email is in my profile.
- psic4t 7y ago
  Looks really good! Any chance for the code?
  - kirubakaran 7y ago
hollerith 7y ago
That’s nice I guess, but doesn’t address my main wish around text: that I will continue to be able to read textual email from my friends without using a full browser engine.
yegle 7y ago
Related: https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ In particular, the beancount community is pretty strong, judging by the frequency of posts in the mailing list and the Telegram group I'm in.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gen220 7y ago
  I’m going to smuggle in some hyperbole, but Ledger fundamentally changed the way I view software. Other than programming languages and excel, there’s not much other software I’ve used where the actual solution is consistently such a short gap from my desire for a solution to exist. Good software should make you feel more powerful every time you use it. Ledger compelled me to see progressively structured but minimally verbose “plain text”, as an input, as a large advantage with regards to barrier to entry, provided you have excellent documentation, intelligent design that’s close to the domain at hand, and copious examples for that structure. Power users can dive deep into the syntax at will, and evolve a simple file into a complex one at their own pace over time. Feature discovery is like discovering a language, which makes sense, because you’re discovering how the plain text you’re typing matches a parser, and how that parsed representation maps to higher level concepts. Meanwhile, my nontechnical friends are totally capable of keeping a ledger, and reading the results with minimal assistance. Learning software that’s been built this way is like learning a language; it’s a challenge that’s tackled in stages and allows you to progress at your own speed.
nlh 7y ago
While we’re on the subject, I just moved my whole financial life over to hledger (https://hledger.org/ https://hledger.org/) and oh my goodness I’m so much happier (I dumped both QuickBooks and Quicken, which I’d been using previously). It won’t be for everyone, but if you know a bit about what you’re doing with double-entry accounting, it’s so so so much better. I only wish I’d discovered this was of doing things years ago (before dumping hundreds of hours into clicking and trying to wrestle with Intuit’s tools.)
- kazinator 7y ago
  I do my self-employment accounting using an accounting system I wrote myself in my own Lisp dialect (TXR Lisp), making heavy use of its object system. It works very well. The entry is done in a file called "data.tl", using simple function calls and object construction. That is then checked into Git after every new transaction. It does everything: deducting income tax, expenses, GST, capital cost allowance for writing off depreciation on equipment, ... And it has decent columnar format reporting for querying the accounts. Invoices to clients are generated in HTML + CSS + SVG logo, which can render to a very polished PDF. I based the system on something I call "zero sum accounting". Every transaction contains 2 or more deltas (N-entry, not just double entry), which represent entries going into various accounts. These deltas must add up to zero: like voltages around a circuit. So for instance a single transaction representing a paid invoice gets split up into an income tax withholding account, gst, account, equity account, cash account, and others, in a single transaction. Negative-running accounts represent outside interests in the business: e.g. the equity account (owner's interest in the business) runs negative, and so would an account representing a bank loan (lender's interest in the business). Positive accounts are what the business has, like cash or value of assets. The confusing "debit" and "credit" terminology is completely avoided.
  - jchook 7y ago
    Any plans to open-source your tool? Sounds fantastic. Also I think "double-entry accounting" literally means "N-entry zero sum accounting" as you describe it, and hledger supports it.
mntmoss 7y ago
Recently I decided that I was going to solve the problem of: I easily write inline TODO comments while I work on code, but then have difficulty keeping track of them and getting my head back into the state of things later. While there is IDE support for such things, it's usually not exactly the right interface I want. So I made a tiny CLI app that scans the source for TODO and FIXME lines and presents a menu of files, containing the number of items to work on in each. Then I type in which file I want to work on and it instantly reports all relevant lines, plus successive comment lines. All I have to do is punch in the line number and start working. I felt a kind of stress relief almost instantly after doing this. It's better than Trello for me. If I need to add additional kinds of data sources, many syntaxes, etc. it might become a bit more complex, but still managable as long as there's an API to get some plaintext lines out. It's basically following up on the hypothesis of a lot of information tools today: it isn't the data generation that's the issue, but the filtering.
- BMorearty 7y ago
  Nice idea. The JetBrains family of IDEs (RubyMine, IntelliJ, etc.) even have this as a built-in TODO panel that shows files with TODO and FIXME comments (syntax is configurable).
  - yawgmoth 7y ago
    Visual Studio does the same ("Task List")
    - daveslash 7y ago
      I really like JetBrain's Resharper for Visual Studio -- they have a very nice, flexible, and configurable 'TODO' window. For example, on our team we try to put TODO followed by our name or initials. The TODO window can then partition those out into separate lists.
      - gregoryl 7y ago
        Give Rider a go. I'm a complete convert; previous attempts were very unpleasant, but its a complete experience now, very similar feel to VS + RS, without the awful latency.
Nerada 7y ago
Plaintext email is great too, cuts out a lot of superfluous junk. https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  They do not list Heirloom-mailx, which is what I use. Heirloom-mailx uses a command-line interface, uses plain text email, and does not use top posting. It also supports entering pipe commands.
sktrdie 7y ago
This is the most hipster project I've ever seen.
Emendo 7y ago
Plain text is great when I am on my laptop, but not as well as soon as I want to, for example, check or update my todo list on OneDrive/Google Drive on my phone or on my work computer. I have found myself moving back into proprietary formats like docx and xlsx because of the above. All I want is a folder full of markdown files (and other files that need to stay in their original format), but I not could find a way to make it work on mobile.
- ajvs 7y ago
  Markor works well on Android.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    This is what I'm using now, and it seems to be working well although I'll point out that it is nagware. I'll put up with the intermittent begging for donations over ads, in-app purchases, and data mining you'd find on other apps.
    - gretagretagreta 7y ago
      Could it be that you had in mind a different app? Markor is completely free (no paid version) and has never nagged me
  - frankish 7y ago
    Thank you for this recommendation. Joplin didn't allow me to manage the files manually, but this gives me far more control. As a bonus, it supports todo.txt, which I was already using. Paired with Dropsync, this is my find of the month.
- goerz 7y ago
  That seems odd... at least on iOS, aren’t there a million markdown editors? What problem did you run in to?
  - coldtea 7y ago
hsitz 7y ago
I didn't see any mention of in a quick look through the linked website, but the book "The Pragmatic Programmer" is one of the best resources you'll find for making the most out of text-based tools. PP goes a little beyond that, too, it's not the book's sole focus, but it's a major one, and the book is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-Anniversary/dp/0135957052 https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-...
- oneepic 7y ago
  I agree, but I found some of the relevant practices really hard to adopt. For example, how do you setup your tooling to put documentation in one place so it can be used for a wide variety of purposes, like code comments and relevant customer docs? Is that realistic from both the dev and user-facing perspectives?
- nzgrover 7y ago
  20th Anniversary Edition is out now: https://pragprog.com/book/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20th-anniversary-edition https://pragprog.com/book/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20t...
zzo38computer 7y ago
I think many things can and should use plain text and yet they don't. Even, with gopher you can easily have plain text files, and simple menus which could be implemented by many different kind of user interface, you don't need to do what they do HTML try to have desktop/mobile and then it doesn't work on anything other than they expected it to be. Many documents I will write plain text file, compatible with everything more than HTML and Microsoft Word is. I also don't like WYSIWYG when I do want text formatting. I don't use favicon on my own server, and have it disabled on the browser. I also think "Plain Text Project" uses too much CSS too. Just you can use plain text. I don't want to use your large font sizes and narrow columns. I use file with plain text for editing. Articles on Usenet and Unusenet too, are written plain text sometimes also with headers, but the headers are also a plain text just are more structured. Some programs have a different user interface for adjusting the headers, but I just use them same as with the rest of the text. In addition to Usenet articles, there is many other thing that you can use a plain text file for many other things. Depending what kind of data it is, you might use just one string per line, or CSV or TSV, or JSON or YAML, or RDF (RDF/XML isn't so good, but I think the RDF Turtle format is good), etc. In many cases I wrote my own programs because I do not like the existing ones.
kickscondor 7y ago
I keep a similar list of sites where you can host plain text or hypertext or Web projects. https://href.cool/Web/Participate/ https://href.cool/Web/Participate/
rhardih 7y ago
I can recommend https://jrnl.sh https://jrnl.sh for a minimal plaintext journal.
WalterBright 7y ago
I used to store bookmarks in the browser. But they wouldn't survive changing the browser, upgrading the browser, reinstalling the operating system, or moving to another device. Besides, I didn't really want to share my bookmarks with the browser vendor, every browser app vendor, and random web sites. Now I just store them in a .txt file. My text editor recognizes URLs and I can just click on them. Matching { } is also supported, which is all one needs for a tree-style database.
- bellweather49 7y ago
  > Matching { } is also supported, which is all one needs for a tree-style database. Could you elaborate on this; maybe give an example?
marcg 7y ago
Plain text is best text. Word format is the worst when it comes to rendering from, say, legal docs to web copy, or any other hidden characters. I came here to voice my support for PlainTasks plugin for Sublime, and found myself disappointed that the author skips over the gold standard in modern text editors... Sublime Text.
miguelmota 7y ago
Related: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com
- nathcd 7y ago
  Alright now everybody, please, resist the urge to post the shitty copycat sites that are always posted after motherfuckingwebsite.com. You can do it!
brokenkebab 7y ago
I find it weird that Emacs is not present in "Tools" section, even while org-mode mentioned several times in descriptions (as a compatibility) of other tools.
reggieband 7y ago
When I'm not using a custom tool I tend to fallback on two (or three) alternatives: * Markdown-ish in a text editor * Google Doc * Google Sheets The first is for any quick notes I need to take or anything that might turn into a code checkin, confluence page, etc. The second is for anything I think I'll have to share and may want collaborators. The third is for almost everything else. I feel I disagree with a lot of people in the rest of the comments. I think plain text in general is a major pain to deal with. I recall several years ago having to deal with CSV parsing and I was aghast at how complicated that is to get "correct". Give me highly structured data formats please. I'll take yaml, toml, JSON or even XML over CSV, TSV or plain text at pretty much every opportunity.
- gnud 7y ago
  CSV is fairly OK if you just ignore Excel. Unfortunately, if you're working with others, they won't let you ignore Excel.
MontagFTB 7y ago
I use TaskPaper synced via Dropbox to achieve a level of organization across my tasks, notes, and deadlines: https://www.taskpaper.com/ https://www.taskpaper.com/ The beauty of it is that I have a GUI when I want it, but at the end of the day it's all stored as plain text, so I'm not bound to the GUI and can fall back to any text editor effortlessly.
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
I have a plain text file that’s basically my notes, bookmarks, how to write ups and anything. I mark each section with hashtag labels, and set alias vinfo=vim /path/info.txt. Anytime I need to reference back how to setup some configuration, or the typical arguments for a command, or likes to YouTube vids on my watch list, I just vinfo in, and /#<topic>. It’s the best system I’ve used, and out lived all the Evernote’s, todo lists, stickies, whatever. Dropbox or chron rsync it to where u want.
thanatropism 7y ago
I use Wordpress.com for blogging and its wizzy-wig editor because it gives me a rough visual estimate of how long my text really is. It’s a perfectly stupid reason and totally inadequate for the level of tech-savvy I’m supposed to have. Or maybe it’s just that the heavy crufty web editor was developed for a purpose and is good at it.
lwhsiao 7y ago
Does anyone know of a system for managing contacts in plain text? I would love some CLI I could use to fuzzy search contacts, making it easy to grab info to my clipboard for using email clients like mutt or aerc.
- EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago
  tre-agrep -3 "Joohn Doe" contacts.txt|cut -d':' -f1
- test_user_123 7y ago
  I don't know of an existing system, but you could look into constructing something using FZF and a plain text file of contacts names and email addresses formatted in a specific way. https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
gtzi 7y ago
I'm a fan of Writeroom for Mac (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom).
tannhaeuser 7y ago
You should definitely add SGML to your list of tools. SGML can turn plain-text files into markup (HTML) documents using your own custom rules (via short references).
agsilvio 7y ago
Plain text is the cornerstone of my b brainstorming app at jumproot.com. there are other tools too but it all starts with plain text.
- Madeindjs 7y ago
  A saas product is the oposite of a plaintext file..
ngcc_hk 7y ago
I switch to bear as it is text based with tag. I think similar text based and Cli would be useful and may be better than using a too specific And structured format.
preek 7y ago
With organice[1], you have access Org mode without using Emacs. It is an implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs. It is built for mobile and desktop browsers and syncs with Dropbox, Google Drive and WebDAV. 1. https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/ https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/
bloak 7y ago
Assume "plain text" means something like traditional printed text. This has three features which don't seem to be implemented on computers in a sensible standardised way: * Spaces. In traditional printed text there is space between words but there are no leading spaces, double spaces or trailing spaces, so the ASCII space character is not an adequate representation. * Paragraphs. In traditional printed text you can start a new paragraph but you can't have an empty paragraph so '\n' is not an adequate representation. Then there's the problem that some systems use '\r' or "\r\n" instead of '\n'. Then there's the problem that Emacs's "long lines" mode and Git's --word-diff don't work properly. (Almost certainly patch tools and "git rebase" don't work either.) * Emphasis. In traditional printed text words and phrases can be printed in italics for emphasis. There are several ways this can be indicated in a computer file, but do editors and diff tools handle them nicely? I think not. Also, it's not completely clear how this should work. For example, I don't think should be allowed, but are ab and ab the same thing, or different things? You wouldn't be able to tell them apart in traditional printed text, but in traditional printed text you can't tell whether a space, a full stop or a dash is printed in italics, or not, either, so it's clear, I think, that we need to somewhat extend the concept of emphasis from what's available in print, but how far do you extend it? (What about nested emphasis?)
- marcthe12 7y ago
 That I believe in stuff like markdown. You usually need like 3 or 4 options
anderspitman 7y ago
I love plain text, and generally agree with the principles here. That said, I think it's important to remember that plain text is still a binary format under the hood. Its power comes from its simplicity and many independent implementations. There's a lesson there for designing software in general, especially APIs and protocols. I also think it's somewhat unfortunate that breaking changes were made to the plain text "API" along the way, in the form of Unicode. Unicode is great, but I wish it wasn't conflated so much with the original plain text. Plus it adds significant complexity. Sure, you can view a plain text file from 1991 in today's editors, but you can't view a Unicode file in an editor from 1991. And it's not apparent to the user why that is.
- jedimastert 7y ago
  Wasn't Unicode made to be kind of backwards-compatible with ASCII? If you stick to the ascii subset of unicode characters then it should be exactly the same, and if you don't then there's no good way to convert it back to ascii anyways.
whatever_dude 7y ago
Nice to see Joplin in the list. It's a note-taking app, sorta like an open-source Evernote, and one of the _main_ reasons why I use it is indeed because it's plain text (markdown) only.

498 points by mmillin 7y ago

ggm 7y ago

Except it's html. They didn't serve text/plain. I do get that thinking as words helps but isn't org mode or markdown plaintext?

oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
That would be text/markdown :) Although serving markdown as text/plain should be totally fine if the client is a web browser. It would be incredibly useful if web browsers rendered text/markdown natively, though - mine renders PDFs, so I think the precedant's there.
- ggm 7y ago
  I too would welcome this and text/org-mode

hprotagonist 7y ago

not to be That Guy, but: all those things listed under each bullet are very nearly just org-mode documentation chapter titles. Org is very clearly Just Plain Text, but there is a nontrivial caveat, which is "... backed by LISP, so text is also data is also code is also text". Most of the real goodies (babel, refile, capture) will not (ever, probably) work outside of emacs. I agree that plain text is rad, though!

merlincorey 7y ago
Furthermore, the templates provided are basically proto-org-mode syntax probably re-invented by someone who has never seen org-mode in the first place. To me, that speaks to how natural much of (but certainly not all of) org-mode syntax is.

ses4j 7y ago

I never thought of plaintext as a way of life, but I think I agree with it in principle (as many others on here probably do.) I didn't know I was part of a movement, but I did write my own simple (and open source) hours tracking/invoicing tool on plaintext principles: https://github.com/ses4j/ts https://github.com/ses4j/ts

geraldbauer 7y ago

Great collection of tools and articles. Plain text is also a great (and the best) choice for datasets. Do NOT use JSON, YAML and friends, for example, as your input format but use plain text with a custom parser to import into any SQL database and than you can easily export to JSON, YAML and friends. See the football.db and the Premier League or World Cup match schedule as living examples [1]. [1]: https://github.com/openfootball https://github.com/openfootball

grenoire 7y ago
As great as such formats are for human consumption, they should come with reference specifications and parser implementations to be usable.
- geraldbauer 7y ago
  You might like the Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Format Specifications (and Tests) org @ https://github.com/csvspecs https://github.com/csvspecs Trying to improve the world's most popular plain text format (and - surprise, surprise - nobody cares).
xg15 7y ago
If your dataset is mostly a list of strings, sure. If it's anything more structured, why exactly? I'd argue that using "plaintext" for structured data (a.k.a, inventing your own data representation) will set up both you and the users of your dataset for unnecessary pain dealing with unescaping and parsing.
- enriquto 7y ago
  if the dataset is "more structured" you can try to simplify this structure for great gains. As a byproduct, you get to use text files for the data.
  - xg15 7y ago
    Could you give an example?

jahbrewski 7y ago

I really feel like this site should be in plain text.

jolmg 7y ago
Tried curl -H 'Accept: text/plain' https://plaintextproject.online/ and was disappointed with HTML...
hinkley 7y ago
All I see is text and a few links. Are you claiming that typesetting doesn’t count as plain text? If so then what do you call books?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Books don't have links.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Sometimes I forget that even HN has people who will happily argue about absolutely anything. Plain text is printed in a physical surface by mechanical or manual means, but you don’t seem to have a problem with pixels. Footnotes, figures, and bibliographies all refer to material out of time and space. Frequently you had to bust ass to make use of them but they were there. And they were replaced with something demonstrably better. So you want a website about plain text with no hypertext at all where you have to copy and paste URLs in order to get past the landing page, in order to have a plain text experience. Maybe bullet journals should only be described in bullet journals and embroidery instructions be embroidered onto fabric. > some of you are thinking, “but John, you just said there’s no difference between geeks and nerds,” and to you I say, “shut up nerds.” - John Hodgeman
    - anamexis 7y ago
      The point is that this site is literally about plain text files, i.e. not using a markup format or other adornments.

pletnes 7y ago

Great find! But why on earth is there no mention of git, or the other VCSes? IMHO they’re a huge reason for using plaintext for more purposes.

gojomo 7y ago

And yet, the site uses a favicon of a typewriter (https://plaintextproject.online/favicon.png https://plaintextproject.online/favicon.png). It's so hard to be pure in this world!

msla 7y ago
It's something I don't like about what programmers tend to mean when they say plain text: Plain text isn't the same as ASCII. It isn't the same as Latin-1 or some other eight-bit encoding. UTF-8 is plain text. UTF-16 is plain text, too, but UTF-8 is better to use on the Internet. My point is that you can go well beyond the Latin alphabet and still be in the world of plain text. You can have correct quotes, as opposed to the apostrophe-quotes typewriters saddled us with, and still be producing plain text. There's nothing inherently "fancy" about using the writing systems most of the people on Earth are fluent in, and, thanks to Unicode, there's many fewer compatibility problems.
- peterbhnews 7y ago
  You say this but I bet most of the people who style themselves plain text purist really do mean ASCII.

tubbs 7y ago

I recently just upped my StandardNotes subscription (the Black Friday ad is still active), and I'm now locked in for ~5.5 years. It's a very plain-text webapp/mobile app that aims to be simple and long-lasting, yet feature-full by means of optional extensions. It's not perfect, but I've been using it for a few months now without any data loss/major bugs encountered, and was excited to use it to ditch Google Keep/Google Authenticator. It's amazing what you can do with simple text, especially with a Markdown-supporting editor.

philips 7y ago
I tried to love standard notes but I had several times where note contents were overwritten or missing between machines. I looked at the API for syncing and it did not give me confidence. Using pass + git now. Works great.
- mobitar 7y ago
  Do you recall when this was? This kind of feedback is highly unusual for us. Most users love SN precisely for its reliable sync. Our syncing engine underwent large-scale changes in June/July of this year to solve an edge case with opening out-of-date clients. If you experienced any issues after this date with updated clients, I'd be very surprised, but would love to hear more if you can spare a moment. The only other issue we have heard of precisely one other time has to do with Firefox pinned tabs + some assortment of Firefox browser extensions. To be clear, any reproducible issues with syncing are 100% fixed as quickly as possible. Lastly, regarding our API for syncing, while our encryption specification is described in plain text detail, you'd have to inspect our source to see how syncing works.
  - jaydouken 7y ago
    Is it possible to use VIM as a text editor in the terminal with SN? Or are users required to use a text editors supported by SN? This seems like an application I'm looking for but I can't ditch my vimrc and plugins
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

loh 7y ago

I think more and more people are realizing that simpler is almost always better, and not only when it comes to software. I've found that this approach works best for nearly all aspects of life. The hard part is simplifying complex things. We have so many odd pieces (usually due to legacy reasons or conflicting designs) which don't quite fit into an otherwise simple solution. Plain text could probably work for most forms of communication and data formats. It's when you need to separate, categorize, and interact with the information that you need more than plain text. This website briefly addresses plain text's shortcomings, so to add to that, in terms of software UX, I would say plain text should be used as a starting point while adding interactive elements (e.g., buttons) and layouts only as necessary. By layouts I mean visual separation of categorized information via whitespace and/or color variations. I've found that this results in extremely intuitive interfaces that are both easy for users to digest and developers to maintain. We seem to be following a trend where "winning" software has little to no learning curves, as they are becoming the simplest possible tools for daily use. I'm not sure if it's a result of the fact that most people are tech savvy, or if we're just getting better at building software and designing interfaces. It's probably some combination of both.

solipsism 7y ago
I'm skeptical any such trend exists. Are you sure you're not misinterpreting your anecdotal experience? I'm not sure if it's a result of the fact that most people are tech savvy Most people aren't tech savvy. Again, maybe you are extrapolating inappropriately from your personal experiences, the people you hang out with, etc?
- loh 7y ago
  I'm mostly referring to the younger generation(s) and the apps most widely used by them. Think of the simplicity of applications like Instagram and Snapchat. There isn't much to the interfaces for most user interaction - some images, videos, text, an input or two, and a few buttons. There may be some advanced touch interactions (pinching and swiping), but overall, applications these days tend to be relatively simple. Older generations definitely struggle using software though, so I think they may be a good metric for how simple and easy to use software can be. Anecdotal experiences could certainly play a role in my opinion here, but I do think I've recognized a pattern over the past couple of decades where winning software interfaces have made a transition from being overly designed and complex to much simpler designs with (usually) predictable interactive element positions and flows. Think of what software was like when there were "shiny" buttons and small text everywhere with confusing visual flow, and then think about what it is now, usually composed of flat buttons (e.g., the "material-ui" standard) and easy to digest visual flow with predictable interactions. This transition is likely a natural result of figuring out over time what works best and what doesn't. By tech savvy people, I mean the end users who interact with software on a regular basis. These people (i.e., most people in the modern world, a number steadily increasing) will naturally gravitate towards the easy-to-use, predictable design patterns to which they've become accustomed.

tabtab 7y ago

I've been kicking around the idea of a plain-text GUI to demonstrate what a "GUI Markup Standard" may work like. Making a graphics-enabled version is a lot work for a demo. VB-classic also had a text-based mouse-able GUI option for a short while, but it never took off. It was based on ANSI escape sequences for DOS consoles, which is sort of in-between "pure text" and graphics. A pure-text GUI is also doable, but console approach is probably more compact because it can use colors as cues instead of symbols. An alternative or supplement to a markup standard is a text-based screen designer. Both a pure-ASCII and console text UI can be defined using plain text for semi-WYSIWYG designing. Rough example: $ Employee Edit Form * _thisLine.title $ $ Last: [#last ] First: [#firstname] MI: [#MI] * #last:fullname=last_name, required=true; #MI:fullanem=mid_initl $ $ {#Save} {#Cancel} {#Other} * #Save:click=_thisForm.submit; #Cancel:click= _thisForm.close * #Other:click=specialProcedureX(), display="Other Options" Symbols and conventions: $ = start of template line * = start of definition or command line [...] = input widget template {...} = button template # = start of reference name. "fullName=" = use if actual database name is diff from reference name ; = definition or command separator "type=" = to define widget type, such as SELECT (not shown) "display=" use if actual label is different from reference label Notes: "type=label" can be used to make bold or italics. The definition line(s) don't have to follow the template lines in most cases. One can thus optionally put most definition lines at the bottom. It may make interpreting the template easier for some people.

hinkley 7y ago
Interactive shell libraries exist. They are quite common for Unix oriented tools. Might be possible to reimplement the same API for a GUI
- tabtab 7y ago
  An example product? Note that I was talking about two different things: a GUI markup standard (probably XML based), and an ASCII WYSIWYG GUI designer. I'll make the distinction clearer in an edit.

kirubakaran 7y ago

I use this plain text planner / calendar every day and I love it, if I can say so myself, since I made it too. I've been using it for a few years now and I can say that it has definitely made me more productive. https://crushentropy.com/ https://crushentropy.com/ You can plan and log your day in plain text and it visualizes your schedule. Markdown for planning, if you will.

jbverschoor 7y ago
Check out NotePlan too.
Madeindjs 7y ago
Sounds great. Did you open source the parser?
- kirubakaran 7y ago
  Thanks! I haven't yet, but I'll work on releasing the code since there is interest :-) My email is in my profile. If you email me, I can let you know when it is available.
Cub3 7y ago
This is awesome, have been looking for something like this for a while, wondering if there's a way to export it to and from my ical
- kirubakaran 7y ago
  Thanks, I'd be happy to implement that. Can you please email me? My email is in my profile.
psic4t 7y ago
Looks really good! Any chance for the code?
- kirubakaran 7y ago

hollerith 7y ago

That’s nice I guess, but doesn’t address my main wish around text: that I will continue to be able to read textual email from my friends without using a full browser engine.

yegle 7y ago

Related: https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ In particular, the beancount community is pretty strong, judging by the frequency of posts in the mailing list and the Telegram group I'm in.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gen220 7y ago
I’m going to smuggle in some hyperbole, but Ledger fundamentally changed the way I view software. Other than programming languages and excel, there’s not much other software I’ve used where the actual solution is consistently such a short gap from my desire for a solution to exist. Good software should make you feel more powerful every time you use it. Ledger compelled me to see progressively structured but minimally verbose “plain text”, as an input, as a large advantage with regards to barrier to entry, provided you have excellent documentation, intelligent design that’s close to the domain at hand, and copious examples for that structure. Power users can dive deep into the syntax at will, and evolve a simple file into a complex one at their own pace over time. Feature discovery is like discovering a language, which makes sense, because you’re discovering how the plain text you’re typing matches a parser, and how that parsed representation maps to higher level concepts. Meanwhile, my nontechnical friends are totally capable of keeping a ledger, and reading the results with minimal assistance. Learning software that’s been built this way is like learning a language; it’s a challenge that’s tackled in stages and allows you to progress at your own speed.

nlh 7y ago

While we’re on the subject, I just moved my whole financial life over to hledger (https://hledger.org/ https://hledger.org/) and oh my goodness I’m so much happier (I dumped both QuickBooks and Quicken, which I’d been using previously). It won’t be for everyone, but if you know a bit about what you’re doing with double-entry accounting, it’s so so so much better. I only wish I’d discovered this was of doing things years ago (before dumping hundreds of hours into clicking and trying to wrestle with Intuit’s tools.)

kazinator 7y ago
I do my self-employment accounting using an accounting system I wrote myself in my own Lisp dialect (TXR Lisp), making heavy use of its object system. It works very well. The entry is done in a file called "data.tl", using simple function calls and object construction. That is then checked into Git after every new transaction. It does everything: deducting income tax, expenses, GST, capital cost allowance for writing off depreciation on equipment, ... And it has decent columnar format reporting for querying the accounts. Invoices to clients are generated in HTML + CSS + SVG logo, which can render to a very polished PDF. I based the system on something I call "zero sum accounting". Every transaction contains 2 or more deltas (N-entry, not just double entry), which represent entries going into various accounts. These deltas must add up to zero: like voltages around a circuit. So for instance a single transaction representing a paid invoice gets split up into an income tax withholding account, gst, account, equity account, cash account, and others, in a single transaction. Negative-running accounts represent outside interests in the business: e.g. the equity account (owner's interest in the business) runs negative, and so would an account representing a bank loan (lender's interest in the business). Positive accounts are what the business has, like cash or value of assets. The confusing "debit" and "credit" terminology is completely avoided.
- jchook 7y ago
  Any plans to open-source your tool? Sounds fantastic. Also I think "double-entry accounting" literally means "N-entry zero sum accounting" as you describe it, and hledger supports it.

mntmoss 7y ago

Recently I decided that I was going to solve the problem of: I easily write inline TODO comments while I work on code, but then have difficulty keeping track of them and getting my head back into the state of things later. While there is IDE support for such things, it's usually not exactly the right interface I want. So I made a tiny CLI app that scans the source for TODO and FIXME lines and presents a menu of files, containing the number of items to work on in each. Then I type in which file I want to work on and it instantly reports all relevant lines, plus successive comment lines. All I have to do is punch in the line number and start working. I felt a kind of stress relief almost instantly after doing this. It's better than Trello for me. If I need to add additional kinds of data sources, many syntaxes, etc. it might become a bit more complex, but still managable as long as there's an API to get some plaintext lines out. It's basically following up on the hypothesis of a lot of information tools today: it isn't the data generation that's the issue, but the filtering.

BMorearty 7y ago
Nice idea. The JetBrains family of IDEs (RubyMine, IntelliJ, etc.) even have this as a built-in TODO panel that shows files with TODO and FIXME comments (syntax is configurable).
- yawgmoth 7y ago
  Visual Studio does the same ("Task List")
  - daveslash 7y ago
    I really like JetBrain's Resharper for Visual Studio -- they have a very nice, flexible, and configurable 'TODO' window. For example, on our team we try to put TODO followed by our name or initials. The TODO window can then partition those out into separate lists.
    - gregoryl 7y ago
      Give Rider a go. I'm a complete convert; previous attempts were very unpleasant, but its a complete experience now, very similar feel to VS + RS, without the awful latency.

Nerada 7y ago

Plaintext email is great too, cuts out a lot of superfluous junk. https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/

zzo38computer 7y ago
They do not list Heirloom-mailx, which is what I use. Heirloom-mailx uses a command-line interface, uses plain text email, and does not use top posting. It also supports entering pipe commands.

sktrdie 7y ago

This is the most hipster project I've ever seen.

Emendo 7y ago

Plain text is great when I am on my laptop, but not as well as soon as I want to, for example, check or update my todo list on OneDrive/Google Drive on my phone or on my work computer. I have found myself moving back into proprietary formats like docx and xlsx because of the above. All I want is a folder full of markdown files (and other files that need to stay in their original format), but I not could find a way to make it work on mobile.

ajvs 7y ago
Markor works well on Android.
- autoexec 7y ago
  This is what I'm using now, and it seems to be working well although I'll point out that it is nagware. I'll put up with the intermittent begging for donations over ads, in-app purchases, and data mining you'd find on other apps.
  - gretagretagreta 7y ago
    Could it be that you had in mind a different app? Markor is completely free (no paid version) and has never nagged me
- frankish 7y ago
  Thank you for this recommendation. Joplin didn't allow me to manage the files manually, but this gives me far more control. As a bonus, it supports todo.txt, which I was already using. Paired with Dropsync, this is my find of the month.
goerz 7y ago
That seems odd... at least on iOS, aren’t there a million markdown editors? What problem did you run in to?
- coldtea 7y ago

hsitz 7y ago

I didn't see any mention of in a quick look through the linked website, but the book "The Pragmatic Programmer" is one of the best resources you'll find for making the most out of text-based tools. PP goes a little beyond that, too, it's not the book's sole focus, but it's a major one, and the book is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-Anniversary/dp/0135957052 https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-...

oneepic 7y ago
I agree, but I found some of the relevant practices really hard to adopt. For example, how do you setup your tooling to put documentation in one place so it can be used for a wide variety of purposes, like code comments and relevant customer docs? Is that realistic from both the dev and user-facing perspectives?
nzgrover 7y ago
20th Anniversary Edition is out now: https://pragprog.com/book/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20th-anniversary-edition https://pragprog.com/book/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20t...

zzo38computer 7y ago

I think many things can and should use plain text and yet they don't. Even, with gopher you can easily have plain text files, and simple menus which could be implemented by many different kind of user interface, you don't need to do what they do HTML try to have desktop/mobile and then it doesn't work on anything other than they expected it to be. Many documents I will write plain text file, compatible with everything more than HTML and Microsoft Word is. I also don't like WYSIWYG when I do want text formatting. I don't use favicon on my own server, and have it disabled on the browser. I also think "Plain Text Project" uses too much CSS too. Just you can use plain text. I don't want to use your large font sizes and narrow columns. I use file with plain text for editing. Articles on Usenet and Unusenet too, are written plain text sometimes also with headers, but the headers are also a plain text just are more structured. Some programs have a different user interface for adjusting the headers, but I just use them same as with the rest of the text. In addition to Usenet articles, there is many other thing that you can use a plain text file for many other things. Depending what kind of data it is, you might use just one string per line, or CSV or TSV, or JSON or YAML, or RDF (RDF/XML isn't so good, but I think the RDF Turtle format is good), etc. In many cases I wrote my own programs because I do not like the existing ones.

kickscondor 7y ago

I keep a similar list of sites where you can host plain text or hypertext or Web projects. https://href.cool/Web/Participate/ https://href.cool/Web/Participate/

rhardih 7y ago

I can recommend https://jrnl.sh https://jrnl.sh for a minimal plaintext journal.

WalterBright 7y ago

I used to store bookmarks in the browser. But they wouldn't survive changing the browser, upgrading the browser, reinstalling the operating system, or moving to another device. Besides, I didn't really want to share my bookmarks with the browser vendor, every browser app vendor, and random web sites. Now I just store them in a .txt file. My text editor recognizes URLs and I can just click on them. Matching { } is also supported, which is all one needs for a tree-style database.

bellweather49 7y ago
> Matching { } is also supported, which is all one needs for a tree-style database. Could you elaborate on this; maybe give an example?

marcg 7y ago

Plain text is best text. Word format is the worst when it comes to rendering from, say, legal docs to web copy, or any other hidden characters. I came here to voice my support for PlainTasks plugin for Sublime, and found myself disappointed that the author skips over the gold standard in modern text editors... Sublime Text.

miguelmota 7y ago

Related: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com

nathcd 7y ago
Alright now everybody, please, resist the urge to post the shitty copycat sites that are always posted after motherfuckingwebsite.com. You can do it!

brokenkebab 7y ago

I find it weird that Emacs is not present in "Tools" section, even while org-mode mentioned several times in descriptions (as a compatibility) of other tools.

reggieband 7y ago

When I'm not using a custom tool I tend to fallback on two (or three) alternatives: * Markdown-ish in a text editor * Google Doc * Google Sheets The first is for any quick notes I need to take or anything that might turn into a code checkin, confluence page, etc. The second is for anything I think I'll have to share and may want collaborators. The third is for almost everything else. I feel I disagree with a lot of people in the rest of the comments. I think plain text in general is a major pain to deal with. I recall several years ago having to deal with CSV parsing and I was aghast at how complicated that is to get "correct". Give me highly structured data formats please. I'll take yaml, toml, JSON or even XML over CSV, TSV or plain text at pretty much every opportunity.

gnud 7y ago
CSV is fairly OK if you just ignore Excel. Unfortunately, if you're working with others, they won't let you ignore Excel.

MontagFTB 7y ago

I use TaskPaper synced via Dropbox to achieve a level of organization across my tasks, notes, and deadlines: https://www.taskpaper.com/ https://www.taskpaper.com/ The beauty of it is that I have a GUI when I want it, but at the end of the day it's all stored as plain text, so I'm not bound to the GUI and can fall back to any text editor effortlessly.

ImprovedSilence 7y ago

I have a plain text file that’s basically my notes, bookmarks, how to write ups and anything. I mark each section with hashtag labels, and set alias vinfo=vim /path/info.txt. Anytime I need to reference back how to setup some configuration, or the typical arguments for a command, or likes to YouTube vids on my watch list, I just vinfo in, and /#<topic>. It’s the best system I’ve used, and out lived all the Evernote’s, todo lists, stickies, whatever. Dropbox or chron rsync it to where u want.

thanatropism 7y ago

I use Wordpress.com for blogging and its wizzy-wig editor because it gives me a rough visual estimate of how long my text really is. It’s a perfectly stupid reason and totally inadequate for the level of tech-savvy I’m supposed to have. Or maybe it’s just that the heavy crufty web editor was developed for a purpose and is good at it.

lwhsiao 7y ago

Does anyone know of a system for managing contacts in plain text? I would love some CLI I could use to fuzzy search contacts, making it easy to grab info to my clipboard for using email clients like mutt or aerc.

EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago
tre-agrep -3 "Joohn Doe" contacts.txt|cut -d':' -f1
test_user_123 7y ago
I don't know of an existing system, but you could look into constructing something using FZF and a plain text file of contacts names and email addresses formatted in a specific way. https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

gtzi 7y ago

I'm a fan of Writeroom for Mac (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom).

tannhaeuser 7y ago

You should definitely add SGML to your list of tools. SGML can turn plain-text files into markup (HTML) documents using your own custom rules (via short references).

agsilvio 7y ago

Plain text is the cornerstone of my b brainstorming app at jumproot.com. there are other tools too but it all starts with plain text.

Madeindjs 7y ago
A saas product is the oposite of a plaintext file..

ngcc_hk 7y ago

I switch to bear as it is text based with tag. I think similar text based and Cli would be useful and may be better than using a too specific And structured format.

preek 7y ago

With organice[1], you have access Org mode without using Emacs. It is an implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs. It is built for mobile and desktop browsers and syncs with Dropbox, Google Drive and WebDAV. 1. https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/ https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/

bloak 7y ago

Assume "plain text" means something like traditional printed text. This has three features which don't seem to be implemented on computers in a sensible standardised way: * Spaces. In traditional printed text there is space between words but there are no leading spaces, double spaces or trailing spaces, so the ASCII space character is not an adequate representation. * Paragraphs. In traditional printed text you can start a new paragraph but you can't have an empty paragraph so '\n' is not an adequate representation. Then there's the problem that some systems use '\r' or "\r\n" instead of '\n'. Then there's the problem that Emacs's "long lines" mode and Git's --word-diff don't work properly. (Almost certainly patch tools and "git rebase" don't work either.) * Emphasis. In traditional printed text words and phrases can be printed in italics for emphasis. There are several ways this can be indicated in a computer file, but do editors and diff tools handle them nicely? I think not. Also, it's not completely clear how this should work. For example, I don't think should be allowed, but are ab and ab the same thing, or different things? You wouldn't be able to tell them apart in traditional printed text, but in traditional printed text you can't tell whether a space, a full stop or a dash is printed in italics, or not, either, so it's clear, I think, that we need to somewhat extend the concept of emphasis from what's available in print, but how far do you extend it? (What about nested emphasis?)

marcthe12 7y ago
That I believe in stuff like markdown. You usually need like 3 or 4 options

anderspitman 7y ago

I love plain text, and generally agree with the principles here. That said, I think it's important to remember that plain text is still a binary format under the hood. Its power comes from its simplicity and many independent implementations. There's a lesson there for designing software in general, especially APIs and protocols. I also think it's somewhat unfortunate that breaking changes were made to the plain text "API" along the way, in the form of Unicode. Unicode is great, but I wish it wasn't conflated so much with the original plain text. Plus it adds significant complexity. Sure, you can view a plain text file from 1991 in today's editors, but you can't view a Unicode file in an editor from 1991. And it's not apparent to the user why that is.

jedimastert 7y ago
Wasn't Unicode made to be kind of backwards-compatible with ASCII? If you stick to the ascii subset of unicode characters then it should be exactly the same, and if you don't then there's no good way to convert it back to ascii anyways.

whatever_dude 7y ago

Nice to see Joplin in the list. It's a note-taking app, sorta like an open-source Evernote, and one of the _main_ reasons why I use it is indeed because it's plain text (markdown) only.