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This is a regular text file. People will read it. Maybe.
- VaucGiaps 13y agoAgain?
- cranefly 13y agoDifferent guy, written because of that previous webpage http://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
- harshadura 13y agothis is pretty lame. hahaha!
- Uperte 13y agoSomeone should make .jpg file with nice typography saying:"This is an image. Not much to see, but you are starring at it anyway..." - Instant first page of HN :)
- PavlovsCat 13y agoThis made me laugh harder than it should have. Or maybe it was just really good, I am not sure yet. Either way, thanks. I had a slightly cranky response to that other thread I never typed, and enjoying this instead is much better. And yes, some people read that stuff. Though I would rather read something silly that is honest, than something that ultimately tries to sell me something. Which reminds me of this! http://textfiles.com/directory.html http://textfiles.com/directory.html <-- Anyone remember spending hours being fascinated by that as a teenager? Text files are the best files.
- znowi 13y agoThis is how I basically keep notes on assorted topics like bash.txt, vi.txt, postfix.txt, etc :)
- olgeni 13y agocat this_is_a_regular_text_file.txt | morse
- raimue 13y agoUseless use of cat!
- gabemart 13y agoDoes anyone know of an easy way to improve the readability of raw text files in the browser? I'm writing a novel using github and the raw text file output looks very ugly in the browser, even using things like readability [1]. It's easy to convert a static text file into something more readable, but I can't seem to find a solution for a dynamic text file at a static address. [1] http://readability.com/ http://readability.com/
- weinzierl 13y agoMake sure your text files are readable in the first place (line length, paragraph length, etc.). Chose a readable font. Text files are shown with the browser default monospace font, but you change it to whatever you like best. I think there is not much else you can do with raw text files in the browser. The next level would be to write in something like markdown and view the processed text, I think.
- gabemart 13y agoI've been trying to avoid adding manual line breaks to the text file because in prose, unlike code or poetry, line breaks are presentation, not content. I suppose I could try to write something that scrapes the text file, adds <p> tags around paragraphs and presents it with some really basic CSS. I don't know how to code, but I might try cobbling something together.
- pioul 13y agoYou could alternatively use an online markdown editor (such as http://markdown.pioul.fr/ http://markdown.pioul.fr/). It'll wrap your paragraphs in <p> tags. Additionally, since it uses the Markdown syntax, it might give you more than paragraphs if you use more than line breaks. (Have a look at the quick reference for more about the syntax.) Edit: Didn't see your answer to @kybernetikos. I still think this could help you out. Also note that in HTML (what you'll get by adding <p> tags to your text), whitespace is collapsed (except inside <pre> tags)
- weinzierl 13y ago
- samsquire 13y agoI don't think not using a CMS was Justin Jackson's point: his core point was that content is king - design can come later, it's a distraction before your content is written. You can easily use a CMS with a very lightweight template. Plain text can be readable too: you can keep it to 72 columns like the RFCs.
- weinzierl 13y agoNice, I like text files. Paragraph width is a little too wide for me, however. I assume you made the line breaks manually, but it IMHO looks better if you let a decent algorithm do it. Most Unix systems should have fmt, but par is better. If you are a vim user, just hit gqip inside of every paragraph. The manual of par [1] has an example that shows the superiority of a dynamic programming algorithm (par, TeX) over a greedy algorithm (fmt, aprox. format manually). [1] http://www.nicemice.net/par/par-doc.var http://www.nicemice.net/par/par-doc.var
- keithpeter 13y agoOr just use nano -W --fill=65 filename.txt to start with. I like the playfulness of these pages (the original and this parody) and I hope both authors achieve their aims.
- tasuki 13y agoThe worst thing isn't that it's too wide but that the line length is inconsistent.
- asdfaoeu 13y ago> Nice, I like text files. Paragraph width is a little too wide for me, however. This is why we need markup languages like HTML. Inevitably people will want different widths paragraphs due to different devices, preferences, etc. Just because some people use HTML badly doesn't mean we need to go back to text.
- ginko 13y ago>I wrote this in a text editor. It's 4.9 KB. That's 0.9 KB too large for a 4K demo.
- alenox 13y agoSomeone please do a snarky markdown one next.
- DanBC 13y agoOr maybe an HTML5 or PURE CSS or asm.js?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nverba 13y agoI think this is a bridge too far. Justin Jackson made a good point about approaching your content first etc, but stripping back to just plain text just makes this harder to read. In fact, if you've read the first post http://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://justinjackson.ca/words.html, I'd argue that this almost impossible to read through to the end without skipping. Which sort of dilutes the whole point... Perhaps the post should read: This is a regular text file. Nothing advanced and not much to see here but some words. And you're pretty sure you've read this already, quite recently in fact... AND THAT'S ANNOYING! You're probably not even reading this bit, as most of you will have elected to skip to the end only to find I'm plugging something. Now that's amazing...
- ajanuary 13y agoThe whole point is that it /is/ hard to read. That it isn't just about content, but how that content is presented. > All these people didn't manage to get the driver compiled and installed, one cause surely was that the readme author didn't care about how to present the content at all. He just cared about functionality. > If a client wants to get something done, I'd like to challenge you to think about user expierence (UX). If you want to sell products you will have more success with some good designs and layouts. By taking it to an exteme of just a text file they're demonstrating that to communicate the content you need to present it effectively, and nice fancy layouts help with that.
- nverba 13y agoI think I was conflicted over the idea of making a point by making said point hard to read. But to be fair, since I last read the text file, the width has been fixed up, which has... made it much easier to read (the original was full width lines). If it had originally been presented in it's current format, I would have never made my comment.
- agargarg 13y ago> In fact, if you've read the first post http://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://justinjackson.ca/words.html, I'd argue that this almost impossible to read through to the end without skipping. That's interesting: I saw the plaintext version first, which I had no problem reading. But in the HTML version, the fact that all bold sentences are pretty mundane and the excessive use of italic and bold just made me want to skip the whole page. In fact I didn't even notice it was the same content until I went back to your post!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- necenzurat 13y agolooking forward for the next article about books and why we should throw away our PC's, tablets, phones and laptops
- pistacchioso 13y agoWhen referring to the post that inspired it, it would have been useful to take advantage ad some kind of technology that, let's say, allowed me to click with my mouse on that link you wrote and be magically transported there.
- sbinetd 13y agoIs that you Mark McCahill?
- olalonde 13y agoLove this (assuming it's satire). I think there is a bit of group think on HN lately. Sometimes, we have a highly up voted UX article that tells us users "can't read" so we should not rely on text. At other times, we have this highly up voted manifesto that tells us we should focus more on text. Am I the only one to see a contradiction? PS: I do think text/plain HTML files are great (in some cases).
- parsabg 13y agoIf you look carefully, this dilemma exists in all forms of creative work. Say I'm creating a piece of electronic music, do I start working on the bare melody on a piano first or do I start with picking voice textures that blend well together? Both can be exciting to work on and both can lead to great songs. Just two different points of entry. Two different layers of abstraction. This is extensible to almost any type of creative work that I know of, and I think people who regularly create things have tried at least a few of these points of entry in their creation process. For me, if I want to narrow down my focus, I go with the piano, the pen, the text editor – black and white, minimum degree of freedom. Otherwise, I start by finding two or more voices/tones/shapes/colors that go/interact well together and focus on the overall experience instead.
- raldi 13y agoLooks awful on an iPhone due to the manual line breaks. If your goal was to let your words speak for themselves, you failed -- I was so distracted by the jagged text I couldn't make it to the end.
- Nekorosu 13y agoMade me laugh. Thanks. :) It's time for someone to step up and write an article that says the conscious choice of tools (or medium) most adequate for the particular problem is what really matters.