
The future of education is plain text - simplystats2
https://simplystatistics.org/2017/06/13/the-future-of-education-is-plain-text/
======
AdmiralAsshat
Plaintext certainly seems more attractive the more docs I write. Over the
years, with both work and personal projects, I've used every format from:

\- Notepad

\- Microsoft Word

\- PDF

\- Twiki

\- Various proprietary WSYWIG that compiles to HTML

\- JIRA

\- Raw HTML

\- Markdown (several flavors)

With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw"
formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the compiled ones require
several hours of changing syntax, image locations, etc.

I've been getting so tired of having to re-do stuff on different platforms
that more of my docs are starting as Plaintext and then written in pseudocode
markup for areas that I know will change on every platform (e.g. generating a
table of contents, image tags, etc).

Having just coded an entire website from scratch that was basically just
documentation, Markdown comes remarkably close to doing what I want, _except_
when the common format fails to meet my needs, which forces me to then have to
switch to a specific flavor of Markdown in order to get something as basic as
tables.

The docs of mine that seem most resilient to platform shifts (other than
plaintext) are the ones that are written in or compiled to longstanding
formats like LaTeX or HTML.

So perhaps my takeaway is, write in something readable that compiles to
something widely available. That will provide the least headache.

~~~
JohnHammersley
If you're interested in adding LaTeX to that list, you might like to try
Overleaf [1] -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor we built to try to
lower the learning curve (I'm one of the founders).

It includes a rich text mode for easier collaboration with non-LaTeX users
[2], and you can also write in Markdown if you like :) [3].

Feedback always appreciated if you do give it a try, thanks.

[1] [https://www.overleaf.com](https://www.overleaf.com)

[2] [https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81](https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81)

[3] [https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501](https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501)

~~~
hobs
Thank you so much for Overleaf, as a new user, its great!

I really like how easy it is to experiment with the LaTeX formatting
(something I wasnt super familiar with) and immediately see the output.

I had someone send me their resume template on overleaf and it was super easy
to get a similar product with my personal touch.

The only feedback I would have is it was a little awkward to do folders within
folders (this was a few months ago) and I had to ken the "hey put a path
separator in the name" before I got it.

~~~
JohnHammersley
Thanks for the feedback - great to hear you've been finding it useful and yes,
improving the file tree is definitely on our list.

Good luck with your future projects!

------
Dangeranger
Plaintext OrgMode notebooks exhibit every benefit listed in Minimaxir's [0]
post, and have the additional advantage of powerful editor integration beyond
R code.

Here is an example of using the IPython kernel to evaluate inline Python code
within an OrgMode document.[1][2]

More information on how to create multi-language notebooks with OrgMode Babel
here[3]

[0]
[http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/](http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/)

[1] [http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob-
ipython...](http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob-ipython-and-
inline-figures-in-org-mode/)

[2] [https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-
ipython](https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython)

[3] [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-
contrib/babel/)

~~~
serhei
Org format is great, but the designs of many of its more advanced features
rely heavily on the Emacs editor's ability to collapse metadata. Once you've
built a file that uses drawers, tags, some spreadsheets, and several levels of
nesting, the resulting file can be too cluttered with metadata to be easily
understandable in other plaintext editors.

~~~
coldtea
Not using those other editors is an added benefit.

~~~
chongli
Not unless you work alone. When you work with other people, it's important to
use a common format for the benefit of the group. Trying to force other people
to use emacs won't win you any friends.

~~~
gkya
Org exports to anything including utf8 plain text with a nice style
reminiscent of IEEE RFCs.

~~~
tscs37
Without using Emacs Org-mode however, you're stuck with something that only
you can properly enjoy and edit, so everyone who doesn't like Emacs is SOL.

------
doublerebel
Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method.

Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method.

Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method.

Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted.

Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads.

Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels.

Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn't require all
of HTML or even computers.

Plain text: because it's good enough for metadata.

My future and knowledge is in YAML-fronted markdown and YAML metadata for
binaries. Let's take back our data. Look out for Optik.io.

~~~
nategri
Started with a Stallman-esque rant I could get down with and then ended in a
very un-Stallman-esque and opaque ad. :(

~~~
doublerebel
Ok fair, this is the first time I've gotten public interest! Awesome. Please
hold shortly, website incoming...

(Just for reference, I do want to build a business on open data, but not by
owning your data. I would like to help people manage their data.)

 _EDIT:_ Website is live! Try [https://www.optik.io](https://www.optik.io)
until DNS catches up, if optik.io is not responding for you.

------
krapht
Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical
notation.

~~~
Pxtl
This.

My wife is a math teacher, and the piss-poor experience of writing
mathematical notation outside of MS Word keeps them stuck on Word. As much as
she and I love LaTeX's math notation, she can't get her departmentmates
onboard with that kind of syntax.

They need to maintain notes, guides, tests, quizzes, etc. and basically
running a team OneDrive is really the only option because all the alternatives
utterly fail a group of non-technical mathies.

~~~
com2kid
Fun fact!

Microsoft Office has two internal math formats, one of them is Ecma Math[0],
the other the other is the "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of
Mathematics"[1], it is a Unicode standard and uses only Unicode standard
characters. It has the unfortunate property of being hard to type on its own
(the integral character isn't on most people's keyboards), but it is pretty
easy to read as just plain text. If you copy an equation out of Word you'll
get something like this: ∫(x^2/2)

[0]
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-a...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-
and-ecma-math-omml/)

[1]
[http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf](http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf)

Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the
main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec
and it is really powerful!

~~~
schoen
Funny that it's not ∫(x²/2), though!

OK, I went and looked at the standard and it seems like they're thought about
this: they allow input as either ∫(x²/2) or ∫(x^2/2) but they apparently
output as ∫(x^2/2) because it's more general and editable, like if you wanted
to change the exponent to something that didn't have a predefined Unicode
superscript.

~~~
mjevans
I like that, except I prefer "un-necessary" parenthesis to be explicit about
the ordering of operations.

Thus assume only + - and * / are unambiguous, everything else be explicit
about ordering.

EG: ∫((x^2)/2)

------
voidhorse
As others have mentioned, once you dig into the innards and nuances of plain
text representations and formats, things can get hairy. Still, I think the
author is correct in that plain text formats are certainly a better base for
sharing curricula, and for knowledge production in general, than something
proprietary like word docs, pdfs, etc.

I think markup languages like markdown which are both fairly easy to convert
into other formats and deliciously human readable are the way to go.

~~~
pyre
PDFs are still ok though. There are many implementations of PDF parsers, many
Open Source. It may not be as "universal" as plain-text, but it is definitely
universal. At this point, I believe that all major operating systems ship with
the ability to open PDFs for display.

~~~
gumby
PDFs presume that the writer has "control" rather than the reader. Actually I
probably shouldn't put quotes around "control" \-- formatting is rigidly
constrained, on purpose.

In addition PDF adapts, by design, a model of paper to the web. It's a
"horseless carriage" file format.

Font size, page width, cut/paste and presentation in general should be the
reader's choice, not the writer's. The Web manages this, sort of.

The OP is right on in this regard. Even the TeXs of this world, while better
than the binary formats, have upgrade complexity.

~~~
ghaff
>should be the reader's choice, not the writer's

Sometimes. There are a lot more design options available if the creator of the
content maintains control over layout, fonts, etc. Sometimes this doesn't
matter--if it's a block of text for example. Fairly simple layouts also render
pretty well on the web.

Different content works better or worse with different approaches. One isn't
intrinsically superior.

------
rnprince
What important problem in this domain does the author think plain text
uniquely solves? I'd say that the arguments aren't specific to education, and
that they're also pretty weak.

Remember that one of the major breakthroughs of the World Wide Web was that
HTML meant documents were no longer plaintext.

~~~
azag0
You could replace "plain text" in the article with "non-binary", and it would
probably make more scence. Markdown is also not plain text in the most strict
sense. Or HTML is plain text in a vague sense. In the end, what really matters
is how easy it is to build parsers and tools for a format. Being non-binary is
a huge plus. I think that was the point of the article, and I agree with that.

~~~
mrec
I don't think anyone would claim that HTML was easy to parse, would they? It
took _decades_ for the HTML5 consensus to emerge.

I like text-based formats, but I'm not convinced that _" Being non-binary is a
huge plus"_ for parsing. With binary formats you can assume that documents are
generated by a tool, which is at least _trying_ to be compliant with a spec,
so barfing on noncompliance is more acceptable. With text you have to be
prepared to cope with any kind of rat dance imaginable.

~~~
tannhaeuser
Parsing semistructured text as markup is a problem solved _over 30 years ago_
[1].

SGML has the SHORTREF feature which allows custom Wiki syntaxes such as
markdown, but also casual math. It works by applying a context-dependent
(parent element dependent) mapping of tokens (such as the `_` token for
markdown emphasis) to replacement text (eg. the `<b>` start-element tag).
Within the `<b>` context, the `_` token is mapped to the `</b>` end-element
tag, in turn, ending the emphasis. In combination with tag omission/inference
(such as in HTML) and other markup minimization and processing features, SGML
is a quite powerful plain text document authoring format.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language)

~~~
mrec
We may be talking about different things. Parsing valid, standard-conforming
HTML/Markdown/whatever is a solved problem. Getting multiple parsers to deal
with arbitrary tag soup, authoring errors, variously-supported extensions etc
in a consistent way is a lot uglier. The problems may be
commercial/political/educational/organizational rather than technical, but
that doesn't mean they aren't real.

~~~
tannhaeuser
I'd say that's exactly what SGML is about - a meta language to describe those
things consistently.

------
austincheney
What many developers either don't understand or refuse to accept is that when
it comes to distribution you don't control formatting. It doesn't matter if
that white space is explicit like white space characters or inferred from
rules like CSS.

There is a naive assumption that all platforms and operating systems will
treat your text (everything is either text or binary before it is parsed into
something else) equally. This is false. When when this fallacy becomes self-
evident many developers will refuse to modify their assumptions in the belief
that consuming software will figure it out properly. Sometimes that is true
and sometimes will absolutely break your code/prose/data. Clearly that
assumption carries a heavy risk, but this is just data at rest.

When it comes to data moving over a wire the risk substantially increases,
because all software that processes that text may make custom modifications
along the way. You don't see it so much when the protocol is primitive like
HTTP, pub/sub, or RSS (but it still does happen frequently). There are many
distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely will mutilate
the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why there are email
attachments).

~~~
u801e
> There are many distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely
> will mutilate the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why
> there are email attachments).

That's not entirely true. For email, the only characters that have special
meaning are carriage return, line feed, period, and the null ASCII character.

Other than that, you can transfer data via SMTP without any issues.

~~~
austincheney
That might be true in theory but it certainly isn't true in practice. I know
because I have done this work before. Documents passed through email tend to
get mutilated by each application that touches it, such as: email servers,
user agent applications, and sometimes network proxies and other application
tools on the line. Microsoft applications were huge offenders, particularly MS
Exchange which added all kinds of crap to the document.

The worst was webmail, which is an email client embedded in a web page. The
documents would have to be mutilated so that contents didn't leak outside of a
bounded area on the page and visually kill any advertisements or other
controls on the page.

If you embed HTML in email and then embed other grammars inside the HTML these
applications will brutalize your document at every step. If you are fortunate
and extremely defensive your document arrive at a first destination mostly
undamaged, but after that any retransmission will thoroughly crush its soul.

~~~
u801e
> That might be true in theory but it certainly isn't true in practice. I know
> because I have done this work before.

My testing was limited to three commercial SMTP servers that I had credentials
for. One of them was the SMTP server that I could access using my Hotmail
account credentials. Other than changing the Message-Id header that I had
manually set in the test message I was sending, I wasn't able to to see any
other changes in the message that I had sent (a string of ASCII characters
(0-255) excluding the ones I noted in my previous reply).

On the other hand, I have no idea what MAPI does with text.

After re-reading your original post, it appears that you're taking
applications and the transfer protocol as a single unit rather than separating
them out. If you use protocols like HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, or NNTP over telnet,
you'll find that they don't typically mangle text (bytes) that you send
outside of certain control characters like I mentioned above.

But you're definitely correct about the problems that applications pose in
terms of preserving the text that they process.

~~~
austincheney
Try putting HTML with some exotic CSS (inline of course because this is
email). Ensure that CSS contains some position absolutes and other properties
that allows presentation outside the accepted bounds.

Also put some JavaScript in there and see what it does.

I guarantee Hotmail will destroy the original document and do so in such a way
that the document evolves from machine that touches the document. The
document, from the perspective of SMTP 821/281/5321 (and so forth) is still
just plain text.

~~~
u801e
> I guarantee Hotmail will destroy the original document [containing HTML/CSS
> and/or JavaScript] and do so in such a way that the document evolves from
> machine that touches the document.

I'm not disagreeing with you here and you're most likely correct. Exchange has
historically not complied with SMTP RFCs. I'll try it out and see how it
changes just to satisfy my curiosity.

I suspect that you were to send email like you specified through Postfix,
Sendmail, or Exim, it wouldn't be altered before being sent to the next MTA or
delivered to the user's mailbox.

------
calinet6
And the future of operating systems is the command line.

We deserve better than this reductionist thinking. Constraints can breed
innovation; but they can also just constrain.

~~~
xj9
it is, but computer isn't smart enough for the future to happen yet

~~~
kmicklas
It's the Unix/text fetishizing developers who aren't the smart enough ones I
think...

~~~
xj9
yet it is the unix/text fetish that forms the foundation for toasters,
smartphones/watches, clouds, and supercomputers you'd think that a superior
alternative would be overtaking this clearly inferior symbolic text system
makes you think, don't it? not like people haven't been trying, but why is it
so persistent? do you blame the fetish? why can't some other technically
superior system win? WHY?

~~~
calinet6
Systems are funny. People do what works. Don't think about it too hard.

------
confounded
It seems worth mentioning that plaintext is discussed here as the storage /
source format.

That doesn't mean it _has to be_ the distribution / consumption format.

One of the great things about something like Markdown is that it can be
rendered to HTML trivially, to display video, equations, etc.

Same thing for ebooks, PDFs, whatever (thanks Pandoc!). It's also easy to
translate between formats (e.g. .md, .org, .rst, etc.).

If a new format comes along that everyone wants, there's an extremely good
chance that plain text can be rendered to it.

The reverse is not true.

~~~
analog31
A thought occurs to me about source versus consumption formats. It would seem
to me that source code should be the distribution format. That way, the
recipient can choose their own preferred consumption format.

When I first heard about HTML, described in some magazine article, it was
touted as a way to give people a chance to have their own unique readers. For
instance, a blind person might want to have their own HTML reader, that uses
the hierarchy of header tags to help them navigate the document.

Today, my impression is that HTML and its successors are treated more like a
general purpose programming language intended to drive visual-specific
browsers. This is why we have to create target specific web pages (e.g.,
mobile and desktop), rather than let each target's browser render generic
pages.

~~~
gkya
That's nice and all but in a classroom you want to be able to say "open page
n". Anything else causes terrible confusion.

~~~
analog31
That's a good point. I suppose there has to be at least a preferred
distribution format that everybody has access to.

------
polygot
While plain text is compatible with virtually 100% of every OS ever, when I
try to open a txt file on my windows machine it asks what application to open
it in, since there are no default apps (Windows 7 and earlier.) This might
make it _appear_ that plain text files are a "special" format because it
doesn't open up when you double click on it.

I have sent plain text files to some of my colleagues in the past (so that
there is a 100% chance that they could read the file), and they were unable to
open them because of this issue with choosing the default application, and
asked me what app they needed to download to view the files.

~~~
ReverseCold
I'm pretty sure .txt opens in notepad..?

~~~
polygot
It does, but sometimes the line breaks don't show up so it's all on one line
with what appears to be tabs. WordPad works fine though.

~~~
ReverseCold
Save your .txt files with CRLF(Windows) line endings, not LF (Linux) or CR
(Mac). Your txt files should now work on all (relevant) OS.

------
geebee
May I share a related vignette?

I have a kid in middle school, and he has a tablet. These things are often
pushed as "educational". Pop quiz: you walk by, and you need to determine,
within a couple of seconds, if what he's doing is actually educational. Here's
what you see:

lots of graphics, whizzing around the screen

-or-

black alphanumeric characters against a white background

Now, you don't actually _know_ , but generally speaking, the second is a
better indicator than the first.

I realized this applies to my own work as well. There are parts of my job that
I consider extremely useful to the world, and parts that I really gotta wonder
about.

If I'm looking at green or white alphanumeric characters against a black
background (easier on the eyes), I'm probably at a UNIX prompt, writing code
that is doing something very analytical, or writing SQL. If I'm looking at
graphics whizzing by, I'm either trying to figure out how to get a drop down
to repopulate with the right thing pre-selected in the latest javascript
framework, or, worse, I'm so irritated with javascript frameworks that I've
decided to browse the web.

Again, it's not a guarantee, but I'm starting to consider a very general
guideline: if you are looking at symbols and alphanumeric characters, the odds
that you are building something of lasting value is much higher than if you
are looking at things with elaborate UI elements.

It's not 100%. My kid could be watching Citizen Kane and developing an
interesting critical point of view. He could be reading 101 fart jokes. It's
not a perfect match. There are worthy and unworthy things on both sides.

But as a general rule, for culture and career - if you're looking at plain
text, that's a good sign.

~~~
heartbreak
Or the student could be a visual learner.

~~~
dagenleg
But there's a reason scientific books aren't very rich in illustrations.

~~~
geebee
I'm coming in a little late here, but I really did mean it was just an
indicator. Visualizations are still important. In fact, a moving graphic might
mean that the kid on the kindle is, in fact, using a visual aid to
conceptualize how back propagation works with neural networks.

I also don't want to come off as knocking video games. I had an Atari in the
80s. Super fun. I would have played that thing 8 hours a day if my parents had
let me. They put a cap on it, along with a rule that I also spend some time
with this odd object involving black letters printed on a series of white
pages if I wanted to play the video game.

The Atari is long gone (though you could say it's as present as ever, in a
greatly enhanced form). But those black letters on white pages are still
pretty excellent, and are identical to how they were 30+ years ago.

------
franciscop
I totally agree and I strongly prefer text. So much that I made this:
[https://www.libre.university/](https://www.libre.university/) for me and my
classmates to learn some topics. Note: the English one is mostly empty except
for [1], the main one is the Spanish page.

[1]
[https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programm...](https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programming)

------
gkya
Plain text would've been THE usual way to go for most things (1), but it's so
hidden in major OSs, even in Linux distros. Many use Word or Wordpad mostly as
a plain text editor becausr they don't know the difference between plain text
and a word document. Also, there is thpage metaphor in those programswhich
people like, because we think of text in pages. This is not that hard to
emulate in plain text but not that straightforward too. People often share
documents so pages and paragraphs must be equal for all (paragraph numbering
might be a solution). We have the tooling fir generating convenient formats
for consumption likr PS and PDF, but default tooling for plain text and the
visibility thereof is what's needed.

(1) When youcompose text you want to compose first style later. Wysiwyg mixes
the two and you end up with crappy spelling and half arsed formatting most
thetime.

------
bluetwo
A long text explaination of how a piston engine works or a short explanation
and an animated GIF.

Which is better?

I would say the second one is more effective.

~~~
a3n
Depending on who's doing the advocating, plain text doesn't inhibit images or
any other media, as any site with media written in markdown or
reStructuredText shows. Lots of GitHub READMEs are written in Markdown and
include images, for example.

There are a number of image formats that are commonly supported, as well as
video and audio. Once you've decided to go beyond face to face speech in the
same language, you have to make compromises. Just try to minimize those, and
try to stay within conflicts that have compromises, like line endings.

I think starting from "authorship in plaintext," along with sharing plaintext
files, would move things pretty far forward. (I guess there's some irony in
there.)

------
minimaxir
Odd to see a _statistics-focused site_ to emphasize plain text as opposed to
formats that promote usability/reproducibility like Notebooks such as Jupyter
(or R Notebooks, as discussed last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795))

The post correctly notes that R Markdown files _are_ plain text, but the
benefits of such (version control) are not discussed by the OP.

~~~
confounded
What are the possible benefits of doing something that could be done using
plaintext, using a JSON blob?

------
FabHK
One advantage of plain text formats that I haven't seen mentioned is that
they're easily and meaningfully diff-able.

You can run two versions of a markdown file or a LaTeX source file through a
diff, and see what's been changed. Try that with a PDF or Word file or what
have you.

As I like to keep my files in version control, I use plain text formats as
much as possible.

~~~
mrweasel
People look at you like your a damn wizard when you diff two texts to find the
differences. I'm sure there are diff tools for Word as well, but almost no one
use them, because they aren't aware that such a tool could exist.

The average person run around with a smart phone in their pocket, a marvel of
engineering and yet they still don't know how to use their computer to do
trivial tasks.

~~~
tincholio
If anything, the "track changes" feature in Word is actually nicer than
diffing by hand (and this is coming from someone who positively hates Word!).

~~~
FabHK
Does it track changes in one document (when enabled), or can you give it two
documents and let it highlight changes?

(A fairly common occurrence when many people's distributed version control
system consists of emailing around "thesis_v0.9.doc", "thesis_v1.0.doc",
"thesis_final.doc", "thesis_final_v2.doc", etc. See also:
[http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531)
)

------
mwcampbell
Text is also accessible to people with sensory disabilities (blind, deaf,
deaf-blind...). Hypertext is also fine, of course; I won't insist on "plain"
text. But this is in contrast with graphics, audio, and video.

------
Sreyanth
The future of education might be plain text, but not for the reasons mentioned
in the article. Also, I think something can be the future of XYZ if it solves
the problems XYZ face currently.

The current content for education is good, but is definitely bandwidth-heavy
and is tough to maintain. But dropping to plain text will force us let go a
few things that otherwise make learning more effective.

I think HTML (or a WYSIWYG style editors - that seem like plain text, but can
be powerful with images, videos, animations when required) also does the same
thing like plain text,

\- it is always compatible (I give it to you that it takes effort to run hifi
stuff on browsers, but still better than plain text).

\- is easy to mix and match

\- is easy to maintain (thanks to many editors)

\- is light weight (not compared with plain text of course)

\- is forward compatible (not possible when all browsers decided to not
support HTML in its current state).

I appreciate the thought behind bringing this up. I think writing something in
plain English, which can then be turned into some super cool learning material
that runs everywhere would be awesome. It helps both in solving the issues
mentioned in the article at the same time keeps learning effective.

~~~
confounded
Disagree. HTML is a fine _output_ format, but one that can always be generated
_from_ plain text. HTML is a poor storage format for the editable 'raw'
content itself.

Images, videos, and animations can all be done in markdown -- they're just
references to files.

Even something as small as the the MathJax CDN getting retired means that I
have old HTML notes which are now 'dead'. If I don't have the
markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, they're just not coming
back.

~~~
collinmanderson
> If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically,
> they're just not coming back.

That's why I try to use HTML as the universal storage. It's not friendly to
edit by hand, but with a basic, limited editor it's wonderful.

------
peterburkimsher
What about the existing "standard", PowerPoint slides and PDFs? Although most
of my notes could be plain-text, any graphs or figures need pictures. ASCII
art doesn't cut it.

~~~
gech
Are you stating that there are people that like pdfs?

~~~
dredmorbius
_Given a sufficient device_ it's actually a fairly decent format. The problem
is that that device has to relatively closely correspond to printed paper
sizes, within a factor of about 75% - 125%.

What PDF offers is a consistent, space-persistent, formatted output. For
reading longer works, it actually _does_ matter to me _where_ a passage
appears on a page, or within a work. Spatial memory is important that way.

I read a lot of material, in a lot of different formats: paged text (manpages,
console-mode browsers), formatted HTML, ePubs, DJVU, image-scanned books.

If I'm reading on a largish (9-10") tablet, PDF in one-page-up format is
actually really good. Fills the screen, is almost always suitably readable.
Scans of old books (thank you, Internet Archive and Google) in particular are
a delight -- there's something about reading a century-plus-old library copy
with markings and (hopefully not _too_ much) marginalia, as well as the
original typesetting and images.

The main problem I have with fluid formats ultimately _is_ their fluidity. I
realise that that's perverse, and that there are times when it's a real
benefit, but again, I can't seem to get away from that spatial memory thing.

If I'm _extracting_ content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown,
DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story.

The ability to spin out formats on demand would be an ideal. I'm looking into
ways of doing that.

~~~
accordionclown
dr. ed said:

> If I'm extracting content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown,
> DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story.

except it's not actually another story. it's just a different part of the same
story. and a format (like .pdf) which only handles one part of the story well
(such as reading) but falls apart on another part (like text reuse) is not --
ultimately -- a good solution.

but that doesn't mean .pdf is worthless. yes, it's worthless as an archival
format, and as a distribution format. (and those two are the ones which people
commonly pitch as _strengths_ of .pdf, unfortunately, which is misguided.)

but .pdf is fine as a one-off output-format, spun out in an on-demand fashion
by an end-user who wants .pdf for their own personal reasons (which require no
justification to us). this is what you mention at the end of your comment, and
i, too, am working on that...

~~~
dredmorbius
As you note: if PDF is what you _want_ , then the option _to request it, or
whatever other format is your preferred option_ , would be excellent user-
centric behaviour.

The idea of requesting, say, <item>.<extension>, where extension is
[html,pdf,epub,djvu,txt,json,tex,md,csv,dir,...] would be interesting.

This presumes that there's a way to represent the content as, say, a directory
listing, CSV, or JSON archive.

------
JBorrow
I must say that I agree - to a certain extent. They (lecture notes) actually
already are (at least in HE Physics education) as everything is written in
LaTeX. They are just not distributed that way. I've been working on hacking
together a demo of some stuff that turns those original LaTeX documents into a
little (static) website. We've had pretty positive reviews from students so
far - it's searchable (which is key), considerably more screen-reader
friendly, and is broken up into manageable chunks rather than being some
monolithic 100+ page .pdf!
([https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/](https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/))

~~~
quantum_magpie
This site looks and feels amazing! Great work. Please share your conversion
demo once it's available!

~~~
JBorrow
Thanks! Most of the stuff is already open source on GitHub - even if it is a
bit... crappy at the moment. I'm attempting a re-write with a vue.js frontent
and a python LaTeX -> JSON compiler.

Here are the associated repos:

[https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc-
preprocessor](https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc-preprocessor) (pandoc
does not handle cross-references from LaTeX -> markdown correctly at the
moment. Can be installed with pip install ltmd)

[https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the-
middle](https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the-middle) (the website &
dodgy compilation script). The docs for this are pretty rubbish at the moment
but the configuration file (litm.cfg) is pretty verbose.

If you are interested in setting it up and need more info, it's probably best
to chat via email. It should work just fine already, and as I said students
love it, but I'm not completely happy with middleman and the huge number of
dependencies.

Also: if you're interested in contributing to the new frontend then let me
know, I'm looking for contributors.

------
simonebrunozzi
Which reminds me of my "biggest" crux these days: what should I replace
Evernote with? Looking for a text-based solution, possibly open source,
possibly encrypted, and possibly with sync.

~~~
Spooky23
Textfiles + <Insert File Sync Too> \+ OS Search facility.

Or something like DevonThink.

~~~
pmlnr
text files + syncthing + grep

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-
grep...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-tools-
for-windows)

------
ajarmst
I find anything but plain text irritating when writing (I dislike attempts to
merge the creative process of writing with the only peripherally related
creative processes of orthography, layout and printing). The WYSIAYG editor
"revolution" and the associated explosion of opague untranslatable binary file
formats did us all a huge disservice. My students learn fairly quickly that my
warning that assignments submitted as MS-Word files will be deleted without
comment was not a bluff.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
>only peripherally related creative process of orthography, layout and
printing

I think you should rethink this a little, constraining or adapting your medium
will provide you with different results that can be better or worse, depending
on your goal of writing.

------
thebiglebrewski
Having written tons of curriculum in Markdown, I thought it was amazing! The
remixing possibilities are endless and it makes all of it so much more
programmable.

------
IshKebab
Great let me just illustrate this mathematical equation with a diagram.

Oh.

~~~
pmlnr
Let me introduce you to LaTeX: [https://www.latex-
project.org/about/](https://www.latex-project.org/about/)

~~~
IshKebab
If you consider that 'plain text' then I have some docx to show you...

------
Spooky23
The future of <X> is the solution that best meets the job.

For exchange and processing data (data != information), UTF-8 text with
contextual formatting like Markdown, CSV, etc is nice as it is generally tool
agnostic.

But for conveying information (information != data), plaintext sucks. That's
why Markdown is a copout -- the formatting still matters... and humans don't
perceive markup coding as well as the rendered result. Humans do better with
visual queues when interpreting written data. Formatting, typesets, bullets,
tables, graphs, etc all help use process and contextualize data.

If being able to reference information or data over time, where time > 10
years, you need to think about what you're doing. (Archivists do this
professionally.) PDF is the quick path to address this for format-sensitive
applications, as big & important institutions like the US Courts use PDF for
their documents -- it isn't going anywhere. Big datasets are more complex to
deal with... you have to decide whether the raw data should be preserved vs.
the processed/analyzed data, etc.

~~~
wruza
Since Unicode already contains directions, smileys, combining marks, why not
simply add VGA color plane and few [un]-bold/italic/big/sub/sup markers and
forget about these shitty .docs, .htmls, etc? We already have a complex
format, why not encapsulate at least simple formatting characters into it?
These can be zero-width for rendering on systems that do not support colors.

For those who want to point me at html, html cannot be rendered without a
browser and created without a messing with tags, but unicode 𝐜𝐚𝐧.

~~~
Spooky23
As a human, what do I gain from this?

Word is probably one of the most successful software products ever devised.
There's a reason -- it solves a problem.

~~~
wruza
We could colorize and format texts via right-click menu in the text box (and
even have plugins there like quick syntax highlighting of selection), instead
of having to use closed un-interoperable solutions.

Word is succesful, but you can't highlight syntax in Word, apply styles in MD,
do WYSIWYG in HTML (cause fonts).

------
vesak
I recently wrote a book using Libreoffice and Microsoft Word, because the
publisher demanded it.

The process took about a year. My own estimate is that we lost about 2-3
months to tool-related problems, without any benefit whatsoever. I have never
in my 20 year career understood the point of word-processing tools, and never
will.

And those tools make money. That is wrong.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Would you have had tool problems if you had just went with Word?

~~~
mxuribe
To be devil's advocate, that's like the recipient stating something like:
"sorry, we only accept manuscripts in blue ink, and not black ink (not for
functional reasons, just historical reasons/habits".

~~~
dredmorbius
Brown M&Ms.

[http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp](http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp)

------
louiz
There’s no such thing as “plain text”.

Is this UTF-8, latin-1, 7 bits ASCII…?

~~~
chaosite
It's UTF-8.

~~~
mmphosis
Is it carriage return then linefeed? or just linefeed? or maybe just carriage
return? or maybe linefeed then carriage return? or maybe a different character
or sequence of characters to denote a newline?

I sent someone an important text (7-bit ASCII) file once. Much later, I found
that they had tried to read it using NotePad. They had spent an inordinate
amount of time trying to format it into something they could read. Had they
opened it in WordPad, Word, a web browser, or practically anything else it
would not have been a problem, but by default text files are opened with
NotePad.

Please don't get me started on tabs vs spaces.

~~~
ed312
The end-of-line character issue is trivial to solve with a very simple editor
(e.g. many editors can figure it out and render appropriately). I _think_ the
real issue is that NotePad is a rather basic (not dumb, just simple) tool
which unfortunately is an OS default. Imagine a world where something like
Notepad++ is the default bare-minimum text editor for a typical end-user OS!

------
jancsika
> My answer to this question was that we need lecture notes stored in plain
> text files (like rmarkdown files) and data stored in csv files with direct
> links.

When I think of lecture notes I think of two uses:

1\. An informal reference/mnemonic for the lecturer. This use suggests a
format that suits the particular lecturer (which may not necessarily be text,
or even a digital format).

2\. Potential answers to exam questions for situations where there are too few
instructors (i.e., lecturer plus TAs) chasing too many students over too short
a time for students to practice critical thinking.

Are there other uses? If not, I can imagine standardizing notes across schools
could be a detriment by streamlining "plugging-and-chugging".

------
yellowapple
The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend
to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if
they even support such media in the first place). This means that these
additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well.

After all, not all of us are able to learn by just reading a bunch of text.
Some of us need graphical (possibly video) or even interactive material as
well. Such material is at high risk of being lost (see also: the abundance of
interactive science demonstrations online that are implemented as Java or
Flash applets).

~~~
u801e
> The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend
> to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if
> they even support such media in the first place). This means that these
> additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well.

Before MIME was a thing,I was possible to embed images in emails by including
a block of uuencoded text in the middle of the email message (which was
otherwise in plain text).

I suppose that could be one option assuming the client program can render
them.

------
EGreg
No, the future is interactive multimedia that you can rewind as many times as
you like.

------
edejong
Here we are, 33 years after PostScript was created and now the answer to
"education" is plain text... Shouldn't we, as tech sector, feel ashamed for
even thinking this might be a good idea?

------
ivanceras
Why stop with markdown? You can draw diagrams[0] with plaintext too

[0]-
[https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/](https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/)

------
anotheryou
even the article uses more :P

Let's agree on markdown/rich text + non-interactive media (images, sound,
video)

------
partycoder
Plain text in what encoding, with what character set? We start adding
implementation details and suddenly it's not as straightforward.

~~~
PawelDecowski
UTF-8, Unicode.

~~~
jancsika
And how do you represent line breaks?

~~~
davidsong
CRLF unless your audience mostly use Mac or Linux.

~~~
zlynx
It seems to me the only thing on Windows that cares about CRLF is Notepad.

Everything else works fine with just LF. A lot of new Windows software even
seems to ship with LF format configuration files. Especially games, probably
because it is so common to have a Windows game with Linux backend servers, so
the developers are working with both.

So anyway, I'd go with just LF unless your software is Windows only.

------
mirimir
> Plain text is always compatible

This person has obviously never been tasked with reading text files from old
mainframes.

~~~
u801e
EBCDIC? I think that some terminal programs were able to translate between
that and ASCII (like Kermit).

~~~
mirimir
Yeah, that.

I was using Windows at the time. I finally discovered UltraEdit.

------
killjoywashere
Plain text should be the only option for medical records. PDFs and drop-in
Word documents should be frowned on.

------
Sodman
I completely agree. After spending hours trying to programatically read
something as 'common' as a PDF [not all .pdf files are created equal, I
learned] - I'm totally on the side of the "Give me the content and I'll deal
with the formatting" mentality.

------
ajarmst
I don't care what you use, as long as Org-Mode can export to it and Pandoc can
consume it.

------
ppod
There is an excellent argument and guide to this here

[https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person-
text/](https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person-text/)

------
ares2012
For the first time ever, the comments on the article actually captured every
thought I had - even the problem with contrast! I'm more impressed by the
readers of that article than the article itself.

------
jbergens
I think json would be much better than csv. At least allowed. It's still text
and possible to open in almost any editor but much better for hierarchical
data and more complex data.

------
voidfiles
Markdown is the new Cursive

------
j_s
I would appreciate any additional pointers to resources available in plain
text demonstrating its effectiveness - the future predicted here should be
readily evidenced by the past!

------
Pulcinella
I would hope that the future of education is not plain text and lectures!
Computers can generate powerful methods of interaction. Why limit them to
being worse than physical paper?

------
lyra_comms
We believe the future of online conversation is plain text, too.

www.hellolyra.com

~~~
lyra_comms
For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries to
guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the modern
Web.

Lyra brings it back.

~~~
u801e
> For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries
> to guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the
> modern Web

I wonder whether the indent really has any advantage over the blank line
separation between paragraphs of text.

------
ptr_void
There are some hiccups like newlines that don't transfer too well between
unix/dos in plain-text.

------
gglitch
I'm as great a fan of plain text as anyone else, but you gain a lot when you
keep it in a sqlite db.

------
agentgt
I have not really found a viable plain text version to Excel that normal users
can use. I have done some Excel like tasks with R, Python (pandas, and various
other python sci libraries) and even SQL (postgres) but it seems its either a
programming language (R, python) or a data format (csv).

I have been meaning to look into what alternatives are out there.

~~~
confounded
R/Python scripts are 100% plain text. iPython notebooks are not.

~~~
agentgt
I didn't say they were not. The issue is they usually do not hold the data and
_present_ the data (ie WYSIWYG). The python and R only are the formulaic part.
I have not seen a format where you can toggle the data or formula and see
results as well as Excel does.

------
Animats
The author doesn't mean "plain text". They mean some variant of Markdown.

