[Macworld]

Post your comments for Forget fancy formatting: Why plain text is best here

[leicaman]

I use Scrivner. It's a great app for serious writing. Some of my favorite authors write their novels on that program. But it fails one of the tests above based on the opening paragraph. It's file format is proprietary, and cannot be opened by any other app. It does export to lots of file formats, but the original Scrivner file won't open in anything else. BUT, the file is pretty future proof in that it's a package and all the contents are readable. So it's not all that dangerous, but just remember that it's going to take some manual work to get your data and research back, along with the metadata and final document.

[ConnorJacksontv08]

Pssst… David… its nvALT, not NValt :-)

[ConnorJacksontv08]

 ConnorJacksontv08, on 11 August 2011 - 05:31 AM, said:

Pssst... David... its nvALT, not NValt :-)

Whoops, I guess the Macworld comment system doesn't like the ellipsis character. :-)

[Strawtag]

 ConnorJacksontv08, on 11 August 2011 - 05:33 AM, said:

Whoops, I guess the Macworld comment system doesn't like the ellipsis character. :-)

Maybe the article should be subtitled "the plainer the better".

[hayesk]

Plain text is timeless? Which plain text? ISO Latin, UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO Windows, Mac, etc.?

ConnorJacksontv08’s comment above demonstrates (well, in my browser anyway), that there is no universal format. Not even "plain text." It’s pretty sad too, considering UTF-8 and 16 was developed decades ago, long before the web. Yet we still have competing standards when there is a perfectly good standard available.

[alexpopov]

Well I'm a young reader, I'm part of the iPod generation. Most people my age don't even know what plaintext is. But I recently discovered vim from the command line, and I love it! It's like plaintext on steroids. You're over complicating things with your three different programs and using a mouse with a gui? That is so 2011 may plaintext live on!

[simdude]

 alexpopov, on 11 August 2011 - 06:54 AM, said:

Well I'm a young reader, I'm part of the iPod generation. Most people my age don't even know what plaintext is. But I recently discovered vim from the command line, and I love it! It's like plaintext on steroids. You're over complicating things with your three different programs and using a mouse with a gui? That is so 2011 may plaintext live on!

+1 for vim. Or MacVim if you like a GUI version. vi/vim is not easy to use but like a lot of powerful tools, when you really learn how to use it, it's pretty amazing. I have been using it daily for over 10 years and find new tricks every week.

[Hawaiian717]

 hayesk, on 11 August 2011 - 06:27 AM, said:

Plain text is timeless? Which plain text? ISO Latin, UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO Windows, Mac, etc.?

Not even that. We can't even get consistent line endings. Try creating a plain text file on a Mac or Linux, then open it up in Notepad on Windows. You'll discover that your document's paragraph breaks are now little boxes and your file is one big paragraph. Fortunately, Windows also ships with a less braindead text editor, WordPad, which can deal with non-Windows line endings correctly.

[lymond]

 leicaman, on 11 August 2011 - 05:25 AM, said:

I use Scrivner. It's a great app for serious writing. Some of my favorite authors write their novels on that program. But it fails one of the tests above based on the opening paragraph. It's file format is proprietary, and cannot be opened by any other app. It does export to lots of file formats, but the original Scrivner file won't open in anything else. BUT, the file is pretty future proof in that it's a package and all the contents are readable. So it's not all that dangerous, but just remember that it's going to take some manual work to get your data and research back, along with the metadata and final document.

Actually, Scrivener files on the Mac are actually packages that you can open in the Finder. Inside, all of your Scrivener writings are stored in individual RTF files. Not proprietary.

[steviesteveo12]

Nah, Scrivener's "proprietary file format" is just a folder full of RTFs. It's fine.

[Pips44]

It is really how you save that is the issue save as text edit but create in whatever you like!

[technologist]

 hayesk, on 11 August 2011 - 06:27 AM, said:

Plain text is timeless? Which plain text? ISO Latin, UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO Windows, Mac, etc.?

US-ASCII. Ain't nothin' don't support US-ASCII.

[RobertBrindlelcjp]

Why not just use Evernote?