13 ms·

Why and How I Wrote My Academic Book in Plain Text

228 points by diodorus 12y ago

therobot24 12y ago
"formatted pdf" doesn't load
- GoodIntentions 12y ago
  It loaded OK for me: http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/my-academic-book-in-plain-text.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/my-academic-book-in-plain-text.html It's html.
  - therobot24 12y ago
    i keep getting: Not Found The requested URL /bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf was not found on this server.
    - dunkelhell 12y ago
      This works: https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcd...
    - TomAnthony 12y ago
      Me too. I think it is this: https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcd...
deeviant 12y ago
Why not write with a pencil and paper, I can think of no more distracting thing than a computer. Or better yet, a quill and parchment, to totally withdraw from the confines and entrapments of modern technology.
- a3n 12y ago
  I've tried writing with a pencil and paper. I finally had to give up, because whenever I'd make a mistake I'd be reaching for the non-existent Esc key to get back into normal mode. Man, talk about a distraction.
- dr_zoidberg 12y ago
  I actually write my first drafts in paper, because its slower than typing and I get to think the sentence, paragraph and overall structure better. Of course, I also strike down and rewrite parts, but using pen and paper helps me think a lot more about what I want to write and how to write it.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  I do write (draw, doodle, sketch, diagram) with pencil/paper as an initial stage in most pieces of work that I produce. I don't just 'write a lot of words in a row' (quoting Schneier's setup page). Nothing fancy, just HB pencils on A4 photocopying paper on a clipboard. Once I have an idea of the structure, I can decide which tool to use. Often markdown but equally often LibreOffice. Sometimes Inkscape. Yes: I also use a fountain pen (I haven't used a goose feather for some decades now, but we did have dipping pens at primary school). With the new Android text input recognition tool, I am seriously considering the purchase of a cheap tablet and stylus.
- acheron 12y ago
  Neal Stephenson wrote three 700 page books with a fountain pen about 12 years ago.
- marssaxman 12y ago
  RSI? I can get through maybe a page of handwritten text before my hand hurts too much to think, while I basically always run out of things to say before typing enough to need a physical break.
  - skigg 12y ago
    It sounds like you probably have too tight a grip and write more from than the wrist and fingers than the shoulder and forearm. This was a solved problem more than a hundred years ago, when it had to be; in the U.S. it's famously associated with the Palmer Method[0], although Palmer didn't originate it by a long shot. (While these books, of course, are written for use with dip pens, and frequently taken up by users of fountain pens today, the methods described do work with ballpoints, rollerballs, gel pens, pencils of not too hard a lead, nearly whatever you have lying about.) Of course, retooling is almost certainly not worth it for you, unless you're dying for a break from computer screens (the only reason I ever write by hand anymore). But I'll leave the link in case anyone is curious, either for their own work or just to know what people used to do with a pen, and why writer's cramp was not as serious a problem before typewriters and computers as we might suppose it was, by how frequently we tend to induce cramp on ourselves. [0]: https://archive.org/details/PalmerMethod1935 https://archive.org/details/PalmerMethod1935
GoodIntentions 12y ago
I use plain text editors mainly and agree with the author's premise about cutting the cruft/using a focused tool. The cost complaint doesn't really fly though. Those times When I need something to be in Doc format, I use libre office - https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ It used to be called "openoffice". It's free. You can verify the documents look right in the free word viewer provided by Microsoft if you're planning to mail it to someone who will open it in Word.
- metasean 12y ago
  > It used to be called "openoffice". OpenOffice.org still officially lives as Apache OpenOffice - http://www.openoffice.org/ http://www.openoffice.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#End_of_OpenOffice.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#End_of_OpenOffice.... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice.org back in 2011. And there are plenty of articles summarizing their similarities and differences - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=openoffice+vs+libreoffice https://duckduckgo.com/?q=openoffice+vs+libreoffice
  - GoodIntentions 12y ago
    Thanks for an informative post. I was under the impression OpenOffice was dead post-fork. Colour me wrong...
    - rpcope1 12y ago
      Not GP, but LibreOffice is much more actively developed than OpenOffice.org currently. Any more it looks like OO.org is just getting maintenance from a few IBMers [1]. It's rather a shame, with all of the brand recognition that was built up in OpenOffice before being acquired by Oracle. [1] - https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/ https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      It's only mostly-dead, but that mostly is enough. Basically, LO is where all the action is, and even IBM has effectively given up on AOO. See the LWN article linked by rpcope1.
TomAnthony 12y ago
This whole articles seems to presuppose that the only alternative to plain text is Microsoft Word. Also by his definition 'plain text' seems to include other markup, including LaTeX. Many academic books and articles are written this way. Am I missing something?
- bnegreve 12y ago
  The author is an assistant professor in history. I'm guessing LaTeX is not very popular in this field.
  - wcaleb 12y ago
    Original author here. Yes, I'm mainly assuming my reader is a humanities person less familiar with LaTeX. Though there's increasing interest in Markdown and LaTeX among historians since I wrote this post. See, for example: http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/sustainable-authorship-in-plain-text-using-pandoc-and-markdown http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/sustainable-authorsh...
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      Asciidoc might be an interesting thing to consider, as well, in this vein.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > This whole articles seems to presuppose that the only alternative to plain text is Microsoft Word. The article addresses a particular area in which Microsoft Word is the dominant status quo choice, and lays out why the author thinks that "plain text" is a desirable alternative. It does not, either explicitly or implicitly, suggest that Microsoft Word is the only alternative to plain text, or vice versa. > Also by his definition 'plain text' seems to include other markup, including LaTeX. I think its reasonable to describe a format where what you see if you load the file in a text editor is the same as the text you actually work with as an author as a "plain text" format. > Many academic books and articles are written this way. The author doesn't claim that it is unique, though he does suggest that there is resistance, particularly in his field. > Am I missing something? I would say it seems like two things: 1. The explicitly stated point of the article ("I want to focus on the specific, idiosyncratic reasons why I wanted (and still want) to write this way, using nothing more than a text editor and Pandoc."), and 2. the implicit target audience of the article (academics in history and similar fields).
explosion 12y ago
Another huge reason to use plain text that he didn't mention is version control. With plain text, you can check the files into a git repo and diff any two commits. You then get all the advantages of working with version-controlled code, e.g. commenting on diffs. Word and Google Docs do save revision history, but they slow to a crawl when you have a document with a lot of pages, to the point of being unworkable.
- nextos 12y ago
  I just logged in to say this. It's an incredibly powerful feature. In general, plain text is great because it's explicit. In contrast, word processors store some odd chain of objects. The steps to rebuild a document from scratch that leads to the same representation are not totally obvious. Sometimes it's a bit stochastic even! XML formats improved the situation, but still plain text wins IMHO. With plain text you can have a toolchain where components for version control, edition and transformation can be replaced seamlessly. New stuff can be introduced at will. In e.g. Word you're mostly locked-in, or at least it's far from trivial to break out.
  - wcaleb 12y ago
    Original author here. Totally agree about version control. When I wrote that post I had not yet learned how to use Git. In a follow-up post I discuss how I now manage all of my notes and citations in plain-text on a Pandoc- and git-powered wiki called Gitit. http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/plain-text-citations.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/plain-text-citations.html
    - kjax 12y ago
      I appreciate that you mentioned LaTeX and its potential usefulness for these scenarios. You get the ability to version control, without making things especially difficult to translate your text into a more appealing output. Granted, one has to learn typesetting semantics first, but it seems to be a good middle ground.
    - explosion 12y ago
abetaha 12y ago
This author's comment rings true > One of mine is adjusting the “look” of a word processing document. I find that editing text in a WYSIWYG word processor distracts me from the content and makes me tinker with the formatting. Like other commenters suggested, I switched to using LaTeX and never looked back. Sadly though LaTeX is not for the faint of heart.
- bkcooper 12y ago
  I find that editing text in a WYSIWYG word processor distracts me from the content and makes me tinker with the formatting. I still end up doing this in LaTeX, only now there's a time lag.
wetmore 12y ago
I really like how this guy clearly knows his way around computers (poke around his site a bit, like the colophon[1]) but his academic interests are in history. It's great to see hacking interests and skills in someone working in a different field; I think it's important that these skills don't remain solely in their usual domain. http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/colophon.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/colophon.html
- wcaleb 12y ago
  Thanks! Important to note that writing my book in Markdown, and having to learn to use the command line for Pandoc, is what started me down the path to learning more programming.
beambot 12y ago
LaTeX is the standard "plain text" [1] format for academic publishing in STEM. For those (like the author) who were unfamiliar with LaTeX or find it daunting, I recommend LyX (http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/). Lyx gives you the best of both worlds: LaTeX under the hood, but with a GUI interface. Also... you should look into BibTeX for citation management. This is much easier than the examples given in the article -- especially with Google Scholar citations pre-prepared in BibTeX format. [1] Considering the definition of "plain text" very loosely, since markdown and LaTeX include rendering cues.
- lutorm 12y ago
  Yeah, I was confused about how he equated "plain text" with "not Word", and was wondering when he would talk about LaTeX. Really, the idea of writing journal articles in Word brings shivers down my spine!
  - omaranto 12y ago
    > Really, the idea of writing journal articles in Word brings shivers down my spine! I think it is completely normal for several fields, probably more common than using LaTeX.
    - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
      Killing sharks for their fins is also normal in several countries, that doesn't not make it an abomination.
      - ufo 12y ago
        Latex has some really weird idiosyncrasies and the tooling around it is stuck in the 80s but all is forgiven when you see how pretty everything ends up looking.
        tux1968 12y ago
        The fonts in almost every PDF that I have ever seen created with Latex just look horrible to me. Am struggling to understand why my perception is so much different than most people who seem very happy with the results. Just googled "latex pdf" and looked at the very first pdf on offer[1], and indeed the fonts look horrible to me, like there is no anti-aliasing applied -- jagged and inconsistent weighting of stems. Am genuinely confused here, and wish I had an explanation of why my perception of Latex output is so different from the majority. [1] https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf
shepardrtc 12y ago
I wrote my Master's Thesis in Word, and I wholeheartedly agree that it is a terrible, terrible idea. There are so many great options out there today that academics should have no problem finding something else. Plain text is certainly an option. Had I been a little more resourceful back in my day, I would have given it a try. Nowadays though, if I'm writing something big, I prefer Scrivener. Small, powerful, and cheap: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I'll add this about Scrivener: It is a tool that needs to be learned to understand it's inherent usefulness. You're are ultimately writing in plain text, Scrivener is there to help organise, categorise, and to go full screen for distraction free writing.
justincormack 12y ago
I was quite (pleasantly) surprised that the O'Reilly workflow is Markdown based.
nickysielicki 12y ago
Can you imagine this guy's reaction when he learns about TeX?
- temporary_art 12y ago
  It's pretty obvious that he knows about most of the plaintext formats. From what I can gather, the premise is that TeX-based writing is almost as distracting as a doc based system, and markdown simplifies that, especially in his domain (history).
- omaranto 12y ago
  Yes, his reaction will probably be something like: "Mmh, well it is plain text, which is nice, but it (1) tempts me to waste time adjusting the typesetting, and (2) TeX or LaTeX source code is much uglier to look at than Markdown".
kinduff 12y ago
Like George R.R. Martin that uses WordStar 4.0 on DOS to write his books. I personally use gedit (gnome) and markdown to write my tutorials and articles. Less distractions, content focused.
tschaume 12y ago
Thanks much for writing this up! At some point, I hope to get to it, too ;-) Until then, I thought I'd share my approach on how I wrote my entire PhD Thesis using AsciiDoc here. In my field of High Energy Nuclear Physics, data analyses usually are accompanied by so-called "Analysis WebPages" which I generate from the same AsciiDoc source files using Wordpress and Stuart Rackham's blogpost [1,2]. Images and other binary files I organize and version-control at a central location using git-annex [3,4] which also allows me to easily backup and share figures with my collaborators online. Bibliographies I auto-generate from the usual bibtex file via asciidoc-bib [5]. I've developed a Makefile [6] that does all of the above "automagically", triggered by simple commands like `make thesis` (generate full PDF), `make hp` (push AsciiDoc source to corresponding Wordpress page), and `make tag` (generate a new thesis version based on git tag and upload to webpage). Unfortunately, my thesis isn't publicly available, yet, but will be soon along with the sources and git history (I hope). In the meantime, the HN readers with STAR privileges [7] can feel free to explore a full working example at [8-10]. [1] https://github.com/tschaume/wp-pdf https://github.com/tschaume/wp-pdf [2] https://srackham.wordpress.com/blogpost-readme/ https://srackham.wordpress.com/blogpost-readme/ [3] https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/ [4] http://downloads.the-huck.com/README/ http://downloads.the-huck.com/README/ [5] https://github.com/petercrlane/asciidoc-bib https://github.com/petercrlane/asciidoc-bib [6] https://gist.github.com/tschaume/a28fdf3522b81a7a4674 https://gist.github.com/tschaume/a28fdf3522b81a7a4674 [7] http://www.star.bnl.gov/ http://www.star.bnl.gov/ [8] http://cgit.the-huck.com/phdthesis/tree/ http://cgit.the-huck.com/phdthesis/tree/ [9] http://star.the-huck.com/ http://star.the-huck.com/ [10] http://star.the-huck.com/download/ http://star.the-huck.com/download/
- k__ 12y ago
  Cool. I'm going to look into this :D I am going to write my Master Thesis in AsciiDoc. It's about modular work-space awareness features in single page applications. The proof of concept app is a online AsciiDoc editor with live-preview and eBook/PDF generation, where I want to write my thesis in.
  - tschaume 12y ago
    Very nice! Since writing a thesis is a very special task I think it'd be great to have such a app be geared towards that purpose. In addition to the features I now know I needed, I feel like I've gathered quite some experience on how to achieve control, reproducibility and flexibility using AsciiDoc but I didn't have the chance to get it out of my head and written down :-) There are a few pitfalls with the asciidoc and dblatex chain which you only learn to navigate when you're in the middle of writing the thesis (floating images, word count, bibliography, organization etc.). The framework/workflow I've set up considers most of them already and has been a huge timesaver and ease of mind for me. You can see some of the underlying ideas went into the Makefile I shared and you could recycle/use them to get a head start on your thesis/project. I'd definitely be happy to collaborate with you and share all my (MIT-licensed) experience :-) Feel free to shoot me an e-mail, I'm certain you'll find me through a quick google inquiry [1] ;-) [1] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lbnl+huck http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lbnl+huck
yirgacheffe 12y ago
Anyone who can relate to the issues expressed in this piece should go download Desk right now - it is the perfect compromise between plain text editors and word processors: http://desk.pm/ http://desk.pm/
- eeZi 12y ago
  > exclusively for OS X
- ebilgenius 12y ago
  It's amazing how I had to watch 20 seconds into a crappy, unskippable video before I could even get a glimpse at what Desk actually is
  - sosborn 12y ago
    You know you can scroll right by the video right?
- cbd1984 12y ago
  Flagged as spam.
themoonbus 12y ago
For my thesis, I would write paragraphs in a plain text editor, and then insert them into a word document. No distractions while writing, and then all of the formatting / footnoting features when I needed them.
sdrizo 12y ago
I am partial to notepad++. I agree that formatting is a major buzz kill to creativity.
sdrizo 12y ago
I am partial to notepad++. I agree that formatting is a major buzz kill to creativity.
WalterBright 12y ago
I write all my articles as plaintext. One reason the author didn't mention is longevity - I don't have to worry about .txt files becoming unreadable. As long as computers exist, they'll be able to read .txt files. I then mark up with ddoc, and the result works just fine in [github](https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org).
Havoc 12y ago
Same thing with notes. I used to use fancy formatting in OneNote...then Microsoft screwed me with an update that shifted, moved & changed everything. Kick that crap to the curb and swore never to use anything more than bold/underline/italic for notes again. Plus checked export options on everything...
enupten 12y ago
Even better: use org-mode.
itaysk 12y ago
Just pointing out the two of the arguments against Word: iPad\iPhone support and price, are not really valid since MS has official Office for iPad\iPhone for free. http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/6/7163789/microsoft-office-free-for-ipad-iphone-android http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/6/7163789/microsoft-office-f... It might not be as feature rich as the full desktop version but it sure is more feature rich that plain text.
dendory 12y ago
It's stupid to use plain text for something that demands rich formatting and where you expect others to read, like a research paper or book, especially when there are great alternatives out there. Why not use Markdown, which can be written and read in a text editor, and compiles as a PDF or HTML and reads as easily as any Word doc. Or even learning LaTeX, which gives you even richer formatting than Word yet allows you all the benefits of writing plain text.
- tome 12y ago
  Looks like you didn't read the article.
- Maken 12y ago
  You should read the article. Your definition of plain text isn't the same as the author's.
ninjakeyboard 12y ago
I'm writing "Learning Akka" for Packt publishing in Emacs Org Mode with Pandoc.
aidenn0 12y ago
Which markup format does pandoc use by default for a .txt extension?
danschuller 12y ago
Pandoc is great. I'm writing my book in markdown and using some Lua scripts and a latex style file with Pandoc to produce a nicely formatted pdf. (It's also one of the more prominent Haskell products but you wouldn't even know because it just works!) I'm looking forward to increasing support for things like figure labelling (Automatically linking figure numbers and labels e.g. see figure 1.2) at the moment I handle this manually.
copperx 12y ago
One word of caution: Plain text (or Markdown et al.) are great if you are a one-man operation or your collaborators share your love of plain text. However, if any of your collaborators, proofreaders, or editors use Word to mark up changes, it is incredibly painful to manually go through through the marked-up Word document, and go back and manually backport every change. As much as I love plain text and LaTeX and its wonderful typesetting (especially with the Microtype package, XeLaTeX, and pro fonts), I stick to Word because it is the status quo in the publishing toolchain: doing otherwise is swimming upstream. I would welcome to hear about solutions to this conundrum.
- meonkeys 12y ago
  I agree, while wincing and trying to deny same. What if you kept the source in plain text, then did reviewing in a WYSIWYG program with any collaborators, proofreaders, and editors that require a WYSIWYG program? After consensus is reached, convert WYSIWYG versions back to plain text, then use a tool to diff+merge changes back into your source. Using source control, you could track coarse or fine changes as desired. I use Pandoc, Vimdiff, and Git in this manner. Vim automates much of the "back porting" pain (never mind the pain of actually learning Vim, which I've already endured).
- kijin 12y ago
  If all your documents were in a GitHub repository, you could teach people to comment on specific lines, view diffs, etc. However, that's probably still too much for the majority of academic writers and editors, and you can't blame them because they're too busy specializing in other fields.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    The homotopy type theory book was managed over github : https://github.com/HoTT/book/commit/cb5b01618ac3cf2774430b503d39e4763c8a4c1e https://github.com/HoTT/book/commit/cb5b01618ac3cf2774430b50...
  - collyw 12y ago
    Git seems too much for many programmers unless it is forced upon them, I don't see it gaining traction outside of its intended field. Maybe there is a market for a simple to use equivalent.
hagope 12y ago
My main problem with using text files instead of word, is the lack of spellcheck...
- kylebgorman 12y ago
  try GNU Aspell.
- meonkeys 12y ago
  Any decent plain text editor includes spellcheck.
- collyw 12y ago
  The html text are I am typing this into includes a spell checker.
jamessantiago 12y ago
Plain text is great. There's so much you can do with it that you can't in word or even latex. I'll write all my coursework assignments in sublime with a double column layout so I can have my notes in one window and my draft in the other. I can then check it all into my git server, run stats against my writing, and see more text without the need for scrolling. I can also search the entirety of my coursework or work notes much faster which is great to find all the references I made to a specific author. I still often have to copy text into word or latex formats but if you have the templating and styles set up that can be pretty quick work. It's nice having the raw text and formatted work seperate.
- baby 12y ago
  I've been writing a book for many years and my set up has always been this: Sublime text with 2 columns: notes on the right, text on the left. When I write notes, or a blog post, or an essay, etc... I use Sublime and markdown. I can easily convert that to LaTeX with pandoc. For more complex rapport I have a script that do the translation from several .md files to one .tex file. If I write a technical paper I just use LaTeX. I will only use word for a quick and dirty rapport.
rynes 12y ago
I wrote my thesis in 1976 on IBM punch cards. I hired a typist to add the equations.
rynes 12y ago
I bought a book a long time ago that appears to have been printed on a standard IBM 1401 line printer. Title Compiler construction for digital computers Author David Gries Edition illustrated Publisher Wiley, 1971 Original from the University of California
- cpr 12y ago
  (I had that book for years, when it first came out. Also my first compiler book.) Yes, but note that he was using the special upper AND lower-case chain on the 1401, which made it at least vaguely readable.
zackchase 12y ago
I don't know anyone in computer science that writes academic documents in Microsoft Word. The standard is LaTeX. It seems the author may be well behind. All markup (in any markup language) is simply text (as opposed to WSIWYG), which is the main thing the author seems to find alluring. However, .txt files by themselves give you no way to manage special characters, references, footnotes, or any other typesetting functionality.
- Maken 12y ago
  The author isn't from computer science nor have a computer science background. Outside computer science most people moved from typewriters to WSIWYG editors, which is the natural transition if you are unfamiliar with how to use a computer. Nowadays, when most people being digital natives or being accustomed to use a computer, it makes more sense for people to move away from analog metaphors to proper computer-designed tools.
sago 12y ago
I write my books (5 published so far through Elsevier and others) in Markdown. It seems the OP uses markdown too. I wondered how he did footnotes in plain text, he just uses a markdown-style syntax. It is an excellent approach with benefits over LaTeX. It has better separation of appearance and content, the content tends to have less visual clutter, and there are pleasant tools for distraction free writing, which I personally like. I wrote my thesis and academic papers in LaTeX, so I have used it a lot. The downside (for both LaTeX and markdown) is dealing with proofing at a publisher. This is minor the first time, but getting a corrected manuscript back from the editor when you need to work on a second edition can prove very cumbersome.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I agree with most of what he said. With plain text markdown files it is easy to write using leanpub on my android phone or iPad. That said, the Office 365 apps run very well on my mobile devices but I only use them ocasionally.
exodust 12y ago
I think everyone should have a shortcut icon to a temp.txt file on their smartphone homescreen. Sometimes you just want to write something quickly without worrying about what category or what app to open, or where to store it. You want one tap and start typing immediately, saving and syncing as you go. I use Note Everything on my Galaxy phone as the text editor. It's fast and good and stays out of the way. Way better than stock text editors. On another note, just found this web text editor via an old comment on linked article. I like it, seems like it's been around for awhile... https://writer.bighugelabs.com/ https://writer.bighugelabs.com/ It just still feels weird to me, using apps that output files, in a web browser. I'm a developer so shouldn't feel strange, but web browsers just seem inappropriate to run even a text editor, regardless of the strength of the web app. I need to get over this mindset.
legulere 12y ago
One reason not to use plain text is that you usually need to manually add newlines inside a paragraph. This makes me furious when I have to edit something.
- jamer 12y ago
  Some text editor programs do this for you, either automatically or with a key-stroke.
collyw 12y ago
In the late 80's when I was in computer classes at school (UK school, not University) I always remember my teacher citing a study where people using PC's (probably on DOS at the time) produced better work than people using Macs. At the time Macs were way ahead with their GUI's and so students would mess about with formatting and making it look pretty, while the PC users focused on content. A few years late studying my Batchelors in Molecular Biology, we got access to a room full of computers, mainly Macs. Most of the students found this fairly novel and typed up essays spending ages in the process. We were told that 5% of the mark would be given for presentation. At the time I found Word really frustrating (Trying to type 1 / 2 which was part of my address would always reformat it to a single character half). I gave up quite early on and went back to focusing on content. To this day I avoid Word, or fancy markup in favour of text when I can.
edwinyzh 12y ago
WritingOutliner (http://writingoutliner.com http://writingoutliner.com), is a Word addin that tries to help professional writers, including academic writers to write large scale documents, the main concept is splitting long documents into smaller trunks. The screenshots there will tell a lot. Disclaimer: I'm the author :)

228 points by diodorus 12y ago

therobot24 12y ago

"formatted pdf" doesn't load

GoodIntentions 12y ago
It loaded OK for me: http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/my-academic-book-in-plain-text.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/my-academic-book-in-plain-text.html It's html.
- therobot24 12y ago
  i keep getting: Not Found The requested URL /bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf was not found on this server.
  - dunkelhell 12y ago
    This works: https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcd...
  - TomAnthony 12y ago
    Me too. I think it is this: https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcdaniel-shear2012.pdf https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/64493/mcd...

deeviant 12y ago

Why not write with a pencil and paper, I can think of no more distracting thing than a computer. Or better yet, a quill and parchment, to totally withdraw from the confines and entrapments of modern technology.

a3n 12y ago
I've tried writing with a pencil and paper. I finally had to give up, because whenever I'd make a mistake I'd be reaching for the non-existent Esc key to get back into normal mode. Man, talk about a distraction.
dr_zoidberg 12y ago
I actually write my first drafts in paper, because its slower than typing and I get to think the sentence, paragraph and overall structure better. Of course, I also strike down and rewrite parts, but using pen and paper helps me think a lot more about what I want to write and how to write it.
keithpeter 12y ago
I do write (draw, doodle, sketch, diagram) with pencil/paper as an initial stage in most pieces of work that I produce. I don't just 'write a lot of words in a row' (quoting Schneier's setup page). Nothing fancy, just HB pencils on A4 photocopying paper on a clipboard. Once I have an idea of the structure, I can decide which tool to use. Often markdown but equally often LibreOffice. Sometimes Inkscape. Yes: I also use a fountain pen (I haven't used a goose feather for some decades now, but we did have dipping pens at primary school). With the new Android text input recognition tool, I am seriously considering the purchase of a cheap tablet and stylus.
acheron 12y ago
Neal Stephenson wrote three 700 page books with a fountain pen about 12 years ago.
marssaxman 12y ago
RSI? I can get through maybe a page of handwritten text before my hand hurts too much to think, while I basically always run out of things to say before typing enough to need a physical break.
- skigg 12y ago
  It sounds like you probably have too tight a grip and write more from than the wrist and fingers than the shoulder and forearm. This was a solved problem more than a hundred years ago, when it had to be; in the U.S. it's famously associated with the Palmer Method[0], although Palmer didn't originate it by a long shot. (While these books, of course, are written for use with dip pens, and frequently taken up by users of fountain pens today, the methods described do work with ballpoints, rollerballs, gel pens, pencils of not too hard a lead, nearly whatever you have lying about.) Of course, retooling is almost certainly not worth it for you, unless you're dying for a break from computer screens (the only reason I ever write by hand anymore). But I'll leave the link in case anyone is curious, either for their own work or just to know what people used to do with a pen, and why writer's cramp was not as serious a problem before typewriters and computers as we might suppose it was, by how frequently we tend to induce cramp on ourselves. [0]: https://archive.org/details/PalmerMethod1935 https://archive.org/details/PalmerMethod1935

GoodIntentions 12y ago

I use plain text editors mainly and agree with the author's premise about cutting the cruft/using a focused tool. The cost complaint doesn't really fly though. Those times When I need something to be in Doc format, I use libre office - https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ It used to be called "openoffice". It's free. You can verify the documents look right in the free word viewer provided by Microsoft if you're planning to mail it to someone who will open it in Word.

metasean 12y ago
> It used to be called "openoffice". OpenOffice.org still officially lives as Apache OpenOffice - http://www.openoffice.org/ http://www.openoffice.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#End_of_OpenOffice.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#End_of_OpenOffice.... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice.org back in 2011. And there are plenty of articles summarizing their similarities and differences - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=openoffice+vs+libreoffice https://duckduckgo.com/?q=openoffice+vs+libreoffice
- GoodIntentions 12y ago
  Thanks for an informative post. I was under the impression OpenOffice was dead post-fork. Colour me wrong...
  - rpcope1 12y ago
    Not GP, but LibreOffice is much more actively developed than OpenOffice.org currently. Any more it looks like OO.org is just getting maintenance from a few IBMers [1]. It's rather a shame, with all of the brand recognition that was built up in OpenOffice before being acquired by Oracle. [1] - https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/ https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    It's only mostly-dead, but that mostly is enough. Basically, LO is where all the action is, and even IBM has effectively given up on AOO. See the LWN article linked by rpcope1.

TomAnthony 12y ago

This whole articles seems to presuppose that the only alternative to plain text is Microsoft Word. Also by his definition 'plain text' seems to include other markup, including LaTeX. Many academic books and articles are written this way. Am I missing something?

bnegreve 12y ago
The author is an assistant professor in history. I'm guessing LaTeX is not very popular in this field.
- wcaleb 12y ago
  Original author here. Yes, I'm mainly assuming my reader is a humanities person less familiar with LaTeX. Though there's increasing interest in Markdown and LaTeX among historians since I wrote this post. See, for example: http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/sustainable-authorship-in-plain-text-using-pandoc-and-markdown http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/sustainable-authorsh...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Asciidoc might be an interesting thing to consider, as well, in this vein.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> This whole articles seems to presuppose that the only alternative to plain text is Microsoft Word. The article addresses a particular area in which Microsoft Word is the dominant status quo choice, and lays out why the author thinks that "plain text" is a desirable alternative. It does not, either explicitly or implicitly, suggest that Microsoft Word is the only alternative to plain text, or vice versa. > Also by his definition 'plain text' seems to include other markup, including LaTeX. I think its reasonable to describe a format where what you see if you load the file in a text editor is the same as the text you actually work with as an author as a "plain text" format. > Many academic books and articles are written this way. The author doesn't claim that it is unique, though he does suggest that there is resistance, particularly in his field. > Am I missing something? I would say it seems like two things: 1. The explicitly stated point of the article ("I want to focus on the specific, idiosyncratic reasons why I wanted (and still want) to write this way, using nothing more than a text editor and Pandoc."), and 2. the implicit target audience of the article (academics in history and similar fields).

explosion 12y ago

Another huge reason to use plain text that he didn't mention is version control. With plain text, you can check the files into a git repo and diff any two commits. You then get all the advantages of working with version-controlled code, e.g. commenting on diffs. Word and Google Docs do save revision history, but they slow to a crawl when you have a document with a lot of pages, to the point of being unworkable.

nextos 12y ago
I just logged in to say this. It's an incredibly powerful feature. In general, plain text is great because it's explicit. In contrast, word processors store some odd chain of objects. The steps to rebuild a document from scratch that leads to the same representation are not totally obvious. Sometimes it's a bit stochastic even! XML formats improved the situation, but still plain text wins IMHO. With plain text you can have a toolchain where components for version control, edition and transformation can be replaced seamlessly. New stuff can be introduced at will. In e.g. Word you're mostly locked-in, or at least it's far from trivial to break out.
- wcaleb 12y ago
  Original author here. Totally agree about version control. When I wrote that post I had not yet learned how to use Git. In a follow-up post I discuss how I now manage all of my notes and citations in plain-text on a Pandoc- and git-powered wiki called Gitit. http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/plain-text-citations.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/plain-text-citations.html
  - kjax 12y ago
    I appreciate that you mentioned LaTeX and its potential usefulness for these scenarios. You get the ability to version control, without making things especially difficult to translate your text into a more appealing output. Granted, one has to learn typesetting semantics first, but it seems to be a good middle ground.
  - explosion 12y ago

abetaha 12y ago

This author's comment rings true > One of mine is adjusting the “look” of a word processing document. I find that editing text in a WYSIWYG word processor distracts me from the content and makes me tinker with the formatting. Like other commenters suggested, I switched to using LaTeX and never looked back. Sadly though LaTeX is not for the faint of heart.

bkcooper 12y ago
I find that editing text in a WYSIWYG word processor distracts me from the content and makes me tinker with the formatting. I still end up doing this in LaTeX, only now there's a time lag.

wetmore 12y ago

I really like how this guy clearly knows his way around computers (poke around his site a bit, like the colophon[1]) but his academic interests are in history. It's great to see hacking interests and skills in someone working in a different field; I think it's important that these skills don't remain solely in their usual domain. http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/colophon.html http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/colophon.html

wcaleb 12y ago
Thanks! Important to note that writing my book in Markdown, and having to learn to use the command line for Pandoc, is what started me down the path to learning more programming.

beambot 12y ago

LaTeX is the standard "plain text" [1] format for academic publishing in STEM. For those (like the author) who were unfamiliar with LaTeX or find it daunting, I recommend LyX (http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/). Lyx gives you the best of both worlds: LaTeX under the hood, but with a GUI interface. Also... you should look into BibTeX for citation management. This is much easier than the examples given in the article -- especially with Google Scholar citations pre-prepared in BibTeX format. [1] Considering the definition of "plain text" very loosely, since markdown and LaTeX include rendering cues.

lutorm 12y ago
Yeah, I was confused about how he equated "plain text" with "not Word", and was wondering when he would talk about LaTeX. Really, the idea of writing journal articles in Word brings shivers down my spine!
- omaranto 12y ago
  > Really, the idea of writing journal articles in Word brings shivers down my spine! I think it is completely normal for several fields, probably more common than using LaTeX.
  - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
    Killing sharks for their fins is also normal in several countries, that doesn't not make it an abomination.
    - ufo 12y ago
      Latex has some really weird idiosyncrasies and the tooling around it is stuck in the 80s but all is forgiven when you see how pretty everything ends up looking.
      - tux1968 12y ago
        The fonts in almost every PDF that I have ever seen created with Latex just look horrible to me. Am struggling to understand why my perception is so much different than most people who seem very happy with the results. Just googled "latex pdf" and looked at the very first pdf on offer[1], and indeed the fonts look horrible to me, like there is no anti-aliasing applied -- jagged and inconsistent weighting of stems. Am genuinely confused here, and wish I had an explanation of why my perception of Latex output is so different from the majority. [1] https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf

shepardrtc 12y ago

I wrote my Master's Thesis in Word, and I wholeheartedly agree that it is a terrible, terrible idea. There are so many great options out there today that academics should have no problem finding something else. Plain text is certainly an option. Had I been a little more resourceful back in my day, I would have given it a try. Nowadays though, if I'm writing something big, I prefer Scrivener. Small, powerful, and cheap: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Someone1234 12y ago
I'll add this about Scrivener: It is a tool that needs to be learned to understand it's inherent usefulness. You're are ultimately writing in plain text, Scrivener is there to help organise, categorise, and to go full screen for distraction free writing.

justincormack 12y ago

I was quite (pleasantly) surprised that the O'Reilly workflow is Markdown based.

nickysielicki 12y ago

Can you imagine this guy's reaction when he learns about TeX?

temporary_art 12y ago
It's pretty obvious that he knows about most of the plaintext formats. From what I can gather, the premise is that TeX-based writing is almost as distracting as a doc based system, and markdown simplifies that, especially in his domain (history).
omaranto 12y ago
Yes, his reaction will probably be something like: "Mmh, well it is plain text, which is nice, but it (1) tempts me to waste time adjusting the typesetting, and (2) TeX or LaTeX source code is much uglier to look at than Markdown".

kinduff 12y ago

Like George R.R. Martin that uses WordStar 4.0 on DOS to write his books. I personally use gedit (gnome) and markdown to write my tutorials and articles. Less distractions, content focused.

tschaume 12y ago

Thanks much for writing this up! At some point, I hope to get to it, too ;-) Until then, I thought I'd share my approach on how I wrote my entire PhD Thesis using AsciiDoc here. In my field of High Energy Nuclear Physics, data analyses usually are accompanied by so-called "Analysis WebPages" which I generate from the same AsciiDoc source files using Wordpress and Stuart Rackham's blogpost [1,2]. Images and other binary files I organize and version-control at a central location using git-annex [3,4] which also allows me to easily backup and share figures with my collaborators online. Bibliographies I auto-generate from the usual bibtex file via asciidoc-bib [5]. I've developed a Makefile [6] that does all of the above "automagically", triggered by simple commands like `make thesis` (generate full PDF), `make hp` (push AsciiDoc source to corresponding Wordpress page), and `make tag` (generate a new thesis version based on git tag and upload to webpage). Unfortunately, my thesis isn't publicly available, yet, but will be soon along with the sources and git history (I hope). In the meantime, the HN readers with STAR privileges [7] can feel free to explore a full working example at [8-10]. [1] https://github.com/tschaume/wp-pdf https://github.com/tschaume/wp-pdf [2] https://srackham.wordpress.com/blogpost-readme/ https://srackham.wordpress.com/blogpost-readme/ [3] https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/ [4] http://downloads.the-huck.com/README/ http://downloads.the-huck.com/README/ [5] https://github.com/petercrlane/asciidoc-bib https://github.com/petercrlane/asciidoc-bib [6] https://gist.github.com/tschaume/a28fdf3522b81a7a4674 https://gist.github.com/tschaume/a28fdf3522b81a7a4674 [7] http://www.star.bnl.gov/ http://www.star.bnl.gov/ [8] http://cgit.the-huck.com/phdthesis/tree/ http://cgit.the-huck.com/phdthesis/tree/ [9] http://star.the-huck.com/ http://star.the-huck.com/ [10] http://star.the-huck.com/download/ http://star.the-huck.com/download/

k__ 12y ago
Cool. I'm going to look into this :D I am going to write my Master Thesis in AsciiDoc. It's about modular work-space awareness features in single page applications. The proof of concept app is a online AsciiDoc editor with live-preview and eBook/PDF generation, where I want to write my thesis in.
- tschaume 12y ago
  Very nice! Since writing a thesis is a very special task I think it'd be great to have such a app be geared towards that purpose. In addition to the features I now know I needed, I feel like I've gathered quite some experience on how to achieve control, reproducibility and flexibility using AsciiDoc but I didn't have the chance to get it out of my head and written down :-) There are a few pitfalls with the asciidoc and dblatex chain which you only learn to navigate when you're in the middle of writing the thesis (floating images, word count, bibliography, organization etc.). The framework/workflow I've set up considers most of them already and has been a huge timesaver and ease of mind for me. You can see some of the underlying ideas went into the Makefile I shared and you could recycle/use them to get a head start on your thesis/project. I'd definitely be happy to collaborate with you and share all my (MIT-licensed) experience :-) Feel free to shoot me an e-mail, I'm certain you'll find me through a quick google inquiry [1] ;-) [1] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lbnl+huck http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lbnl+huck

yirgacheffe 12y ago

Anyone who can relate to the issues expressed in this piece should go download Desk right now - it is the perfect compromise between plain text editors and word processors: http://desk.pm/ http://desk.pm/

eeZi 12y ago
> exclusively for OS X
ebilgenius 12y ago
It's amazing how I had to watch 20 seconds into a crappy, unskippable video before I could even get a glimpse at what Desk actually is
- sosborn 12y ago
  You know you can scroll right by the video right?
cbd1984 12y ago
Flagged as spam.

themoonbus 12y ago

For my thesis, I would write paragraphs in a plain text editor, and then insert them into a word document. No distractions while writing, and then all of the formatting / footnoting features when I needed them.

sdrizo 12y ago

I am partial to notepad++. I agree that formatting is a major buzz kill to creativity.

sdrizo 12y ago

I am partial to notepad++. I agree that formatting is a major buzz kill to creativity.

WalterBright 12y ago

I write all my articles as plaintext. One reason the author didn't mention is longevity - I don't have to worry about .txt files becoming unreadable. As long as computers exist, they'll be able to read .txt files. I then mark up with ddoc, and the result works just fine in [github](https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org).

Havoc 12y ago

Same thing with notes. I used to use fancy formatting in OneNote...then Microsoft screwed me with an update that shifted, moved & changed everything. Kick that crap to the curb and swore never to use anything more than bold/underline/italic for notes again. Plus checked export options on everything...

enupten 12y ago

Even better: use org-mode.

itaysk 12y ago

Just pointing out the two of the arguments against Word: iPad\iPhone support and price, are not really valid since MS has official Office for iPad\iPhone for free. http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/6/7163789/microsoft-office-free-for-ipad-iphone-android http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/6/7163789/microsoft-office-f... It might not be as feature rich as the full desktop version but it sure is more feature rich that plain text.

dendory 12y ago

It's stupid to use plain text for something that demands rich formatting and where you expect others to read, like a research paper or book, especially when there are great alternatives out there. Why not use Markdown, which can be written and read in a text editor, and compiles as a PDF or HTML and reads as easily as any Word doc. Or even learning LaTeX, which gives you even richer formatting than Word yet allows you all the benefits of writing plain text.

tome 12y ago
Looks like you didn't read the article.
Maken 12y ago
You should read the article. Your definition of plain text isn't the same as the author's.

ninjakeyboard 12y ago

I'm writing "Learning Akka" for Packt publishing in Emacs Org Mode with Pandoc.

aidenn0 12y ago

Which markup format does pandoc use by default for a .txt extension?

danschuller 12y ago

Pandoc is great. I'm writing my book in markdown and using some Lua scripts and a latex style file with Pandoc to produce a nicely formatted pdf. (It's also one of the more prominent Haskell products but you wouldn't even know because it just works!) I'm looking forward to increasing support for things like figure labelling (Automatically linking figure numbers and labels e.g. see figure 1.2) at the moment I handle this manually.

copperx 12y ago

One word of caution: Plain text (or Markdown et al.) are great if you are a one-man operation or your collaborators share your love of plain text. However, if any of your collaborators, proofreaders, or editors use Word to mark up changes, it is incredibly painful to manually go through through the marked-up Word document, and go back and manually backport every change. As much as I love plain text and LaTeX and its wonderful typesetting (especially with the Microtype package, XeLaTeX, and pro fonts), I stick to Word because it is the status quo in the publishing toolchain: doing otherwise is swimming upstream. I would welcome to hear about solutions to this conundrum.

meonkeys 12y ago
I agree, while wincing and trying to deny same. What if you kept the source in plain text, then did reviewing in a WYSIWYG program with any collaborators, proofreaders, and editors that require a WYSIWYG program? After consensus is reached, convert WYSIWYG versions back to plain text, then use a tool to diff+merge changes back into your source. Using source control, you could track coarse or fine changes as desired. I use Pandoc, Vimdiff, and Git in this manner. Vim automates much of the "back porting" pain (never mind the pain of actually learning Vim, which I've already endured).
kijin 12y ago
If all your documents were in a GitHub repository, you could teach people to comment on specific lines, view diffs, etc. However, that's probably still too much for the majority of academic writers and editors, and you can't blame them because they're too busy specializing in other fields.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  The homotopy type theory book was managed over github : https://github.com/HoTT/book/commit/cb5b01618ac3cf2774430b503d39e4763c8a4c1e https://github.com/HoTT/book/commit/cb5b01618ac3cf2774430b50...
- collyw 12y ago
  Git seems too much for many programmers unless it is forced upon them, I don't see it gaining traction outside of its intended field. Maybe there is a market for a simple to use equivalent.

hagope 12y ago

My main problem with using text files instead of word, is the lack of spellcheck...

kylebgorman 12y ago
try GNU Aspell.
meonkeys 12y ago
Any decent plain text editor includes spellcheck.
collyw 12y ago
The html text are I am typing this into includes a spell checker.

jamessantiago 12y ago

Plain text is great. There's so much you can do with it that you can't in word or even latex. I'll write all my coursework assignments in sublime with a double column layout so I can have my notes in one window and my draft in the other. I can then check it all into my git server, run stats against my writing, and see more text without the need for scrolling. I can also search the entirety of my coursework or work notes much faster which is great to find all the references I made to a specific author. I still often have to copy text into word or latex formats but if you have the templating and styles set up that can be pretty quick work. It's nice having the raw text and formatted work seperate.

baby 12y ago
I've been writing a book for many years and my set up has always been this: Sublime text with 2 columns: notes on the right, text on the left. When I write notes, or a blog post, or an essay, etc... I use Sublime and markdown. I can easily convert that to LaTeX with pandoc. For more complex rapport I have a script that do the translation from several .md files to one .tex file. If I write a technical paper I just use LaTeX. I will only use word for a quick and dirty rapport.

rynes 12y ago

I wrote my thesis in 1976 on IBM punch cards. I hired a typist to add the equations.

rynes 12y ago

I bought a book a long time ago that appears to have been printed on a standard IBM 1401 line printer. Title Compiler construction for digital computers Author David Gries Edition illustrated Publisher Wiley, 1971 Original from the University of California

cpr 12y ago
(I had that book for years, when it first came out. Also my first compiler book.) Yes, but note that he was using the special upper AND lower-case chain on the 1401, which made it at least vaguely readable.

zackchase 12y ago

I don't know anyone in computer science that writes academic documents in Microsoft Word. The standard is LaTeX. It seems the author may be well behind. All markup (in any markup language) is simply text (as opposed to WSIWYG), which is the main thing the author seems to find alluring. However, .txt files by themselves give you no way to manage special characters, references, footnotes, or any other typesetting functionality.

Maken 12y ago
The author isn't from computer science nor have a computer science background. Outside computer science most people moved from typewriters to WSIWYG editors, which is the natural transition if you are unfamiliar with how to use a computer. Nowadays, when most people being digital natives or being accustomed to use a computer, it makes more sense for people to move away from analog metaphors to proper computer-designed tools.

sago 12y ago

I write my books (5 published so far through Elsevier and others) in Markdown. It seems the OP uses markdown too. I wondered how he did footnotes in plain text, he just uses a markdown-style syntax. It is an excellent approach with benefits over LaTeX. It has better separation of appearance and content, the content tends to have less visual clutter, and there are pleasant tools for distraction free writing, which I personally like. I wrote my thesis and academic papers in LaTeX, so I have used it a lot. The downside (for both LaTeX and markdown) is dealing with proofing at a publisher. This is minor the first time, but getting a corrected manuscript back from the editor when you need to work on a second edition can prove very cumbersome.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I agree with most of what he said. With plain text markdown files it is easy to write using leanpub on my android phone or iPad. That said, the Office 365 apps run very well on my mobile devices but I only use them ocasionally.

exodust 12y ago

I think everyone should have a shortcut icon to a temp.txt file on their smartphone homescreen. Sometimes you just want to write something quickly without worrying about what category or what app to open, or where to store it. You want one tap and start typing immediately, saving and syncing as you go. I use Note Everything on my Galaxy phone as the text editor. It's fast and good and stays out of the way. Way better than stock text editors. On another note, just found this web text editor via an old comment on linked article. I like it, seems like it's been around for awhile... https://writer.bighugelabs.com/ https://writer.bighugelabs.com/ It just still feels weird to me, using apps that output files, in a web browser. I'm a developer so shouldn't feel strange, but web browsers just seem inappropriate to run even a text editor, regardless of the strength of the web app. I need to get over this mindset.

legulere 12y ago

One reason not to use plain text is that you usually need to manually add newlines inside a paragraph. This makes me furious when I have to edit something.

jamer 12y ago
Some text editor programs do this for you, either automatically or with a key-stroke.

collyw 12y ago

In the late 80's when I was in computer classes at school (UK school, not University) I always remember my teacher citing a study where people using PC's (probably on DOS at the time) produced better work than people using Macs. At the time Macs were way ahead with their GUI's and so students would mess about with formatting and making it look pretty, while the PC users focused on content. A few years late studying my Batchelors in Molecular Biology, we got access to a room full of computers, mainly Macs. Most of the students found this fairly novel and typed up essays spending ages in the process. We were told that 5% of the mark would be given for presentation. At the time I found Word really frustrating (Trying to type 1 / 2 which was part of my address would always reformat it to a single character half). I gave up quite early on and went back to focusing on content. To this day I avoid Word, or fancy markup in favour of text when I can.

edwinyzh 12y ago

WritingOutliner (http://writingoutliner.com http://writingoutliner.com), is a Word addin that tries to help professional writers, including academic writers to write large scale documents, the main concept is splitting long documents into smaller trunks. The screenshots there will tell a lot. Disclaimer: I'm the author :)