A plain text note-taking system for problem solving

Re:A plain text note-taking system for problem solving by hansvm on Sunday August 08, 2021 @05:11AM (#28105263)

I'm not sure I like the analogy as a proof this can't be plain text; my professors and I would often use LaTeX snippets when communicating over plain-text mediums like e-mail -- not to later render into something nicer, but left as-is since it fit the problem domain well and allowed us to quickly communicate ideas that needed some degree of precision. Even if you're firmly in the "code can't be plain text" camp I think you'll agree that LaTeX used in that fashion still counts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A plain text note-taking system for problem solving by eurasiantiger on Sunday August 08, 2021 @08:05AM (#28106110)

Interesting edge case, this one. Rich text is commonly called that because there is a GUI editor that transparently converts the markup to different styles.

However, that clearly doesn’t apply to markup that is common enough to become a medium of communication.

Then, the question is, where to draw the line? One could argue that markdown only provides minimal semantic structure, and as such is akin to punctuation, which hasn’t always existed in ”plain text”, either.

I think some new categories are needed. Effectively, the standard ones would be something like:

1. Unstructured text: edited and viewed in plain text editor, formatting limited to whitespace

2. Rich text: edited and viewed in GUI editor with unconstrained structured and unstructured formatting

3. Structured text: markdown, LaTeX, etc. Edited as plain text with minimal markup, viewed by rendering source document in GUI, with automatic formatting based on structure and chosen style

4a. Program code, human-written and -readable

4b. Program code, automatically generated (JS bundles, etc)

5. Machine code as binary

[ Parent | on HN ]