5 ms·

RTF isn’t a better option than MD, plaintext is. We start with the premise that we are talking about plain text, as in plain text, texts. But pretty soon we are

RTF isn’t a better option than MD, plaintext is. We start with the premise that we are talking about plain text, as in plain text, texts. But pretty soon we are into colours, then maybe images and videos, and then what all not. But MD still is closest to plaintext because in most cases MD (or a similar scheme), even when not rendered, can be read easily in its plaintext formatting.

labster 2y ago
Honestly plaintext has a pretty bad record as a format, with all of the UTF-16, Latin-2, Shift JIS, and so on. I’d suggest paper, or for true archival storage, parchment and stone.
- 1propionyl 2y ago
  Honestly paper, parchment and stone have a pretty bad record as a format. They either degrade or even if preserved can become unreadable (e.g. Linear B) without a surviving linguistic community. Even when the text survives and is rediscovered, translations produced with century-scale gaps often lose subtext or connotation that would still have registered across a narrower gap. I'd suggest an unbroken chain of oral transmission...
  - labster 2y ago
    If you’re going oral tradition, you might as well use repeatedly-compressed JPEG instead. Same quality but less space used by the storage devices.
  - drexlspivey 2y ago
    I’d suggest stone tablets
  - lou1306 2y ago
    > They either degrade Much more slowly and gracefully than any digital medium we have concocted so far (save for core rope memory, maybe). > even if preserved can become unreadable (e.g. Linear B) without a surviving linguistic community [...] translations produced with century-scale gaps often lose subtext This pertains to the message and not the support; also, I'll take missing subtext over missing text any day of the week, thank you very much.
    - internetter 2y ago
      > Much more slowly and gracefully than any digital medium we have concocted so far https://arcticworldarchive.org/ https://arcticworldarchive.org/ would like a word
      - lou1306 2y ago
        This is a high-tech vault located in the Arctic. Compare this with manuscripts that survived centuries by virtue of simply being on a library shelf in some random monastery. Furthermore, the vault contents are stored on piqlFilm, which in turn uses Boxing barcodes [1]. So, they literally rely on an analog support. I restm my case. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_barcode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_barcode
- account42 2y ago
  That's like saying paper is a bad record as a format, with all of punch cards, barcodese, and so on.
tengwar2 2y ago
And again, my requirement includes colours - also bold, underline, some font support, left indent etc. It's not sufficient that a file format be long-lived - it also has to encode the information that I need. MD is poor at that, plain text doesn't even attempt it.

labster 2y ago

Honestly plaintext has a pretty bad record as a format, with all of the UTF-16, Latin-2, Shift JIS, and so on. I’d suggest paper, or for true archival storage, parchment and stone.

1propionyl 2y ago
Honestly paper, parchment and stone have a pretty bad record as a format. They either degrade or even if preserved can become unreadable (e.g. Linear B) without a surviving linguistic community. Even when the text survives and is rediscovered, translations produced with century-scale gaps often lose subtext or connotation that would still have registered across a narrower gap. I'd suggest an unbroken chain of oral transmission...
- labster 2y ago
  If you’re going oral tradition, you might as well use repeatedly-compressed JPEG instead. Same quality but less space used by the storage devices.
- drexlspivey 2y ago
  I’d suggest stone tablets
- lou1306 2y ago
  > They either degrade Much more slowly and gracefully than any digital medium we have concocted so far (save for core rope memory, maybe). > even if preserved can become unreadable (e.g. Linear B) without a surviving linguistic community [...] translations produced with century-scale gaps often lose subtext This pertains to the message and not the support; also, I'll take missing subtext over missing text any day of the week, thank you very much.
  - internetter 2y ago
    > Much more slowly and gracefully than any digital medium we have concocted so far https://arcticworldarchive.org/ https://arcticworldarchive.org/ would like a word
    - lou1306 2y ago
      This is a high-tech vault located in the Arctic. Compare this with manuscripts that survived centuries by virtue of simply being on a library shelf in some random monastery. Furthermore, the vault contents are stored on piqlFilm, which in turn uses Boxing barcodes [1]. So, they literally rely on an analog support. I restm my case. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_barcode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_barcode
account42 2y ago
That's like saying paper is a bad record as a format, with all of punch cards, barcodese, and so on.

tengwar2 2y ago

And again, my requirement includes colours - also bold, underline, some font support, left indent etc. It's not sufficient that a file format be long-lived - it also has to encode the information that I need. MD is poor at that, plain text doesn't even attempt it.