Re:Why Prefer Textfiles? (2010)
by eviks on Friday January 02, 2026 @12:19PM
(#46467013)
I'm amused by all the plaintext defenders not being able to parse this simplest of the file formats!
> if you view the site on desktop ... , or mobile browser in desktop-mode (for me at least), or the source, the line-breaks form proper paragraphs
Nope. The first paragraph consists of 3 lines (#9,10,11), so has 2 extra linebreaks (both in desktop and source form). The next one is lines #13-21, so has 8 extra linebreaks. Because of that it doesn't reflow properly, so looks bad at most of the screen widths
> not like any text is missing or moved.
It is moved due to linebreaks, here is a simple example: the notation of the numbers is force-moved to the next line instead of being adjacent to the numbers, this hurts your "perfect" readability
> re characters 32 to 126
> (decimal)
There is nothing perfect about readability of the poorly formatted/laid out text! And doing everything "plainly" simply robs you of the ability to reach the expressiveness available even to the cave man
> if you view the site on desktop ... , or mobile browser in desktop-mode (for me at least), or the source, the line-breaks form proper paragraphs
Nope. The first paragraph consists of 3 lines (#9,10,11), so has 2 extra linebreaks (both in desktop and source form). The next one is lines #13-21, so has 8 extra linebreaks. Because of that it doesn't reflow properly, so looks bad at most of the screen widths
> not like any text is missing or moved.
It is moved due to linebreaks, here is a simple example: the notation of the numbers is force-moved to the next line instead of being adjacent to the numbers, this hurts your "perfect" readability
> re characters 32 to 126
> (decimal)
There is nothing perfect about readability of the poorly formatted/laid out text! And doing everything "plainly" simply robs you of the ability to reach the expressiveness available even to the cave man