Plain Text Project

I like the Plain Text Project's philosophy. https://plaintextproject.online/ A tool is great for collaboration, but how much do you really need for a personal KB? And how much effort do you want to spend migrating? Then there's vendor lock-in, learning curves, etc. A well-organized directory structure with plain text files gives you a data store that won't become obsolete and can be used on any OS. I use CLI tools to search (e.g., grep) and that's all the features I need right there.

I follow the advice about structuring a work log outlined in this post: https://plaintextproject.online/articles/2018/07/04/worklog.html#struc… The four bullet points in that section pretty much encapsulate everything that I need from a work log.

All my projects have a README.md, some a README.org. These are simple uncluttered formats which everyone with the most basic of readers can read. A few years back I fount my decades old masters thesis, written in plaintext latex. It compiled first time to pretty pdf on a raspberry pi. If you care about content, or anything really, keep it simple. https://plaintextproject.online/

I do that by month, in what's essentially a monthly recap file. Do that in a text editor, using a modified version of a simple template[1] that I found online. [1]: https://plaintextproject.online/templates/monthly-recap.txt

This is how a website should look. It provides information. As others have said, it has a clean, customizable look, and (imo) content that you won’t find anywhere else. The brilliance is the simplicity. You don’t get ads every other article. You get information. Look at a ‘man’ page. It delivers information in an easy to read, text format. We have had so much CSS, JS, pop-ups, pop-unders, and invasive click-tracking shoved down our collective throats that “surfing” the web is not an enjoyable experience anymore. It’s a damn chore. There is an undercurrent of simplicity in the design of web-pages that I personally am starting to more often. If you look at links posted here by highly technical people or *nix power users, it’s a bare-bones blog or site. For example: https://plaintextproject.online/index.html

It purports to be, even though it isn't: >Believe it or not, plain text is used everywhere. Even when you don’t see it. Where? In the source code for software, web pages, blog posts and articles (like this one), configuration files on your computer, and more. https://plaintextproject.online/2017/07/11/matters.html

And yet, the site uses a favicon of a typewriter (https://plaintextproject.online/favicon.png). It's so hard to be pure in this world!

Been in a similar philosophy for a while now. I like the idea of staying native to the OS, using open formats as much as possible, and using interoperable toolings. The idea is to approach content as data-first, with tools on top, and be at ease with plans to Walk-Out when needed. Besides the article in discussion, here are a few inspirations for plain-text as the defaults. - The writing of our very own Obsidian’s CEO, Steph Ango at https://stephango.com @kepano on HN. - A Plain Text Personal Organizer, https://danlucraft.com/blog/2008/04/plain-text-organizer/ - A template to organise life in plain text, https://github.com/jukil/plain-text-life - Achieve a text-only work-flow, http://donlelek.github.io/2015-03-09-text-only-workflow/ - Note Taking, Writing and Life Organization Using Plain Text Files, http://www.markwk.com/plain-text-life.html - Plain Text Journaling System, https://georgecoghill.wordpress.com/plain-text/ - Plain Text Project, https://plaintextproject.online/ - PlainText Productivity, http://plaintext-productivity.net/ - The Plain Text Life: Note Taking, Writing and Life Organization Using Plain Text Files, http://www.markwk.com/plain-text-life.html - Use plain text email, https://useplaintext.email/ - Writing Plain Text by Derek Sivers, https://sive.rs/plaintext