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Add .txt As the Extension of Your Readme file
- arrakeen 13y agothe quicklook problem on mac can be solved with this plugin: http://whomwah.github.io/qlstephen/ http://whomwah.github.io/qlstephen/
- troni 13y agoNo thanks. The files are not broken, your idea of needing to double-click the file is the problem here.
- koala_advert 13y agoYea GUIs are stupid!
- jfb 13y agoNo, the idea that I don't own the file name is stupid. The goddamned computer should figure out what data type the file contains.
- stack0v3erfl0w 13y agoUntil it has to figure out what data type files like this one contains http://code.google.com/p/corkami/downloads/detail?name=CorkaMIX.zip http://code.google.com/p/corkami/downloads/detail?name=Corka...
- VMG 13y agoSo the user must always decide what to do with a file instead of the user interface? Seems backwards to me.
- troym 13y agoI will not: I will not allow the ignorance that spews from Redmond to infect my software. I will not: I will not cater to users with a broken OS. I will not: I will not bother because it represents the minimal technical hurdle for Windows users.
- shocks 13y agoAnd yet I bet you build websites with IE support in mind.
- chc 13y agoWhat a facile display of false heroism. Ignoring users is the second easiest thing in the world, right after declaring that you're too cool for Microsoft. But this opinion has neither heart nor intellect behind it. It's pure hipsterism — "Yeah, I'm above Microsoft and all the sheeple who use their products!" If you don't want to support Windows, that's cool. It's your choice. But don't act like this is some great moral stance any more than companies refusing to provide device drivers for Linux.
- rafekett 13y agoThe idea of a minimal technical hurdle is important in free software. If we adapt everything from our free world to look just like the Windows world, Windows users will never notice that there's something else better. It's important that free software give itself some competitive advantage over nonfree software, especially for its users.
- chc 13y agoThis is a much better-reasoned response. Like I said, excluding people is not inherently unreasonable. You almost always have to exclude someone, and you're free to define that "someone" in whatever way suits you best. But it isn't something to make blustering declarations about, as though you're taking some great moral stance — it's a practical choice that everyone has to make.
- martin-adams 13y agoForget adding a .txt to the end of a file. I want Notepad to understand \n.
- stack0v3erfl0w 13y agoWordpad does.
- drivebyacct2 13y agoWordpad since 7 is awful. Dreadful. Especially for the usecase of reading \n EOL'd txt files.
- rammark 13y agoThis is a really important point. TXT files are associated with Notepad by default. If we want README.txt (or README.md/rst/org.txt) files to be read by the least sophisticated users, then they should all have Windows line endings.
- futhey 13y agoWhile it may make logical sense to some people, the ultimate implication when you see a .txt file is that the developer uses Windows. I'm not sure a lot of developers are comfortable with that.
- facorreia 13y agoYes, tens of millions of developers are comfortable with the notion of developers using Windows.
- futhey 13y agoThis isn't a comment on the superiority of any OS, but on misrepresentation. I don't pretend to use a mac by adding _MACOSX folders either.
- shocks 13y agoYour comment is ignorant. There is nothing wrong with a developer that uses Windows and anyone who thinks similarly is equally ignorant.
- vampirechicken 13y agoRight. I thought we were only supposed to hate Perl and PHP. I can't keep up with the dogma...
- jfb 13y agoNo. File extensions are stupid and broken.
- VMG 13y agoWhy? What's wrong with encoding metadata about the content in the filename?
- jfb 13y agoBecause it then prevents me from changing the filename the way I want to. Because legacy garbage.
- Shorel 13y agoIn what operating system? All my Windows and Linux systems let me change the filename, without selecting the extension by default, and in the rare case that I want, I can change the extension too, from the same interface.
- blacktulip 13y agoREADME_FOR_WINDOWS_USERS.txt
- ekyo777 13y agoI assume this would explain how to open an extensionless file? ;)
- ekyo777 13y agoalthough it doesn't seems to bring much I'm not against the .txt extension for README but '.md.txt' feels like an horrid idea. Maybe it's only me but I think it brings more confusion for pretty much no gain. is it markdown ? is it a normal text file? is it a custom extension ?
- micro-ram 13y ago.md is a special type of .txt file. Nothing wrong with having a README.md. Let the OS have a default for reading .md files. In Windows that may be Notepad or something completely specialized like markdownpad.com. If we are adding .txt because the target is novice users, then you should have README.txt so they can click on it.
- drcube 13y agoHere's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better OS.
- shocks 13y agoOh shut up. The issue here is much more than just "Windows suckzzz!!!!". Get off your high horse and stop being an OS elitist, it's pathetic. edit: I now understand this is a reference to a comic that was published when I was five years old. Hah.
- mikeyagley 13y agoIt's a reference to this Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/
- drcube 13y agoBesides being a joke based off a classic Dilbert cartoon, Windows really is broken, at least in this one specific area. File extensions should only be used by people. The OS should have other ways of knowing the file type. And ".txt" is redundant. The default assumption should be "text" and only other file types should require extensions. IMHO.
- shocks 13y agoNotice that I never disagreed with anyone on this. I also think that file extensions are broken. My issue is that you (and a few others) lay the blame solely on Redmond. The issue of file extensions goes far beyond Windows. Every operating system is subject to them.
- drcube 13y ago> An extension ‘txt’ also informs novice users about the role of these files: they are not programming code, they are primarily meant to be read. If only the file name hinted at that fact...
- walls 13y agoUsing that logic, let's get rid of extensions entirely. All applications from now on shall just be named EXECUTE.
- ultimoo 13y agoI don't know why the OP is a screenshot of github that is linked to github. Maybe it is some new kind of link bait. Here is the content -- "But I really feel like these extensionless files are a bad idea for usability. They look odd in Windows explorer, and they break Quicklook on Mac. An extension ‘txt’ also informs novice users about the role of these files: they are not programming code, they are primarily meant to be read."
- niggler 13y ago"Maybe it is some new kind of link bait." Ghostery shows one analytics package, Disconnect shows 4. Trying to rack up pageviews for future ads?
- freeasinfree 13y agoREAD.ME
- niggler 13y agoDo people use README or README.md for README files formatted in markdown?
- VeejayRampay 13y agoREADME.md or README.markdown which IIRC is the proper extension for markdown files since .md had already been claimed by some other (now most likely obscure) file format prior to Markdown's rise to stardom.
- BruceIV 13y agoThis isn't only of use to Windows users - lazy ZSH users can set up a suffix alias for .txt, so that you can open README.txt just by typing its name, but that doesn't work for files without extensions (like README).
- arocks 13y agoIn fact Winzip recognizes extension-less README files quite well. It shows them in a different color and most users understand that it is something to be viewed. The name 'README' is pretty obvious. While we are at it, do we still need to use the three letter extensions which are a legacy of the MS-DOS era and FAT filesystems? A couple of years down the line, people would wonder why we tried to save one letter by typing 'txt'!
- crazygringo 13y agoInteresting... most commenters here (so far) seem to be against the extension. Can someone explain why? Except for executables, all the files I use have extensions -- .jpg, .html, .png, .mp3, .sh, and so on. Why should text files be any different? "README" doesn't tell me if it's text, or markdown, or HTML, or anything. Having ".txt" lets me know the format without opening it first to see. I just can't figure out why anyone would ever not put a ".txt" extension on a text file, when the entire consumer ecosystem of computing uses extensions to help automate actions more usefully.
- jfb 13y agoI hate them because they're an abstraction leak. The type of a file's content is different from the application that I want to use to manipulate it, which both are in turn different from the name I chose to give the file. That current file systems and the GUI representations on top of them are so badly designed as to confuse three unrelated concepts is a failing of software and as clear an indication as you could ask for of the triumph of Worse Is Better.
- chc 13y agoThe conflation of file type and editor is orthogonal to the use of file extensions as type metadata. I agree that including the file's type in the name is suboptimal, but in a world where we're constantly sending files from one environment to a completely different one, it isn't entirely unreasonable either, as file names are the one truly universal way of identifying a file, and a file's type is part of its identity.
- joshguthrie 13y agoThat's ironic coming from a site where the header appears in Comic Sans to me because of some web font usage.
- jasonlotito 13y ago> That's ironic coming from a site where the header appears in Comic Sans Which is odd because the site doesn't use Comic Sans. If it's appearing as Comic Sans to you, the problem is on your end. Also, not sure how that makes it ironic.
- joshguthrie 13y ago> appears in Comic Sans to me because of some web font usage Which I was admitting: this is on my end. It's ironic because some opinions in this thread sounded like old-school "You want .txt because of Micro$oft", exactly the Microsoft-bashing we were used to read back then when websites where in Comic Sans.
- rafekett 13y agoI don't work on anything with a README that is for nontechnical users, and I don't produce technical material for anything other than UNIX. No one I work with that I care about pleasing uses it. I'd rather stick with the tried and true convention.
- mvasilkov 13y agoWhile we're at it, let's add .exe to Linux binaries.
- Luc 13y agoYour principles VS hundreds of millions of instances where people are forced to go through a right-click menu tree... I think I'll choose the annoyance-reduction.
- silon5 13y agoIMO, using .txt extension is just fine and a good idea. But it will not help until MS fixes their notepad to handle standard Unix text files.