Re:If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown
by tengwar2 on Thursday February 27, 2025 @05:22PM
(#43199194)
> Markdown ... is for content, not style
A drawback of markup languages, including TeX, is that they intermingle content and style instructions.
> RTF ... is a Microsoft proprietary format
RTF originated with Microsoft, but it's widely supported by scores of word processors and editors. I generally use TextEdit on a Mac, which supports plain text, RTF and RTFD directly. Hence you don't write your own parser: you use the editors already available. It has been around since 1987 with a high degree of stability in the core functionality, so it's a reasonable expectation that those editors will be around long-term, but if they disappear, you can get the text out.
> It's better to give each device (desktop app, ebook reader, printer) flexibility of display
For some purposes, perhaps. Not for mine: if I set text to be red, it should be red on the screen, and red on the paper. Not "emphasised" - red.
PDF is not intended as an editable format, so not relevant here.
A drawback of markup languages, including TeX, is that they intermingle content and style instructions.
> RTF ... is a Microsoft proprietary format
RTF originated with Microsoft, but it's widely supported by scores of word processors and editors. I generally use TextEdit on a Mac, which supports plain text, RTF and RTFD directly. Hence you don't write your own parser: you use the editors already available. It has been around since 1987 with a high degree of stability in the core functionality, so it's a reasonable expectation that those editors will be around long-term, but if they disappear, you can get the text out.
> It's better to give each device (desktop app, ebook reader, printer) flexibility of display
For some purposes, perhaps. Not for mine: if I set text to be red, it should be red on the screen, and red on the paper. Not "emphasised" - red.
PDF is not intended as an editable format, so not relevant here.