MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - A simple tagged text format with an HTML converter

RobertDDL · 05-03-2015, 04:10 AM

Hitch, I mostly agree with your rant (except I'd say LibreOffice instead of MS Word), but it is a bit off the mark here, when we are talking about plain text.

Plain text files are always readable, and can be created and edited with any editor, regardless of their particular design. When you make a plain text file, you have to make some design decisions: do I use length-limited lines or not? Do I ignore italics, or do I use some symbol to indicate them? Do I ignore scene breaks, or do I show them, and if so, how? Do I treat headings like any other lines of text, or do I distinguish them in some way? If so, how do I differentiate between heading levels? And so on...

I'm not talking about markup languages, but you have to decide these questions -- even by ignoring them, you decide them one way or the other. No matter how you decide them, the text will be readable, and neither you nor the reader will be bound to any particular software or system, but some of these decisions may have some advantages or disadvantages for the reader (though, of course, they may have different preferences).

I think that Markdown has made a very poor design decision regarding headings. I say that I'm doing it better, allowing headings of all levels to be easily grepped, and allowing the file to be easily converted to HTML and from there to ePub. What more can you want from a plain text file? But this is not a markup language, it's a style guide. It doesn't need to be adopted widely, because it's not in competition with anything else, and there are no compatibility issues whatever -- it's just plain text, with the design issues involved in any plain text decided in some particular way.

So, really, I think that all these strong "we do not need another format, why don't you stay with what already exists" replies are not valid criticism. If you are happy with Markdown, use it. Otherwise, either ignore what I'm doing, or have a look at it and criticise it for its shortcomings and faults, but not for the mere fact that I'm not using Markdown or a subset of it, and that I stand up and say in mixed company what exactly I do instead.

05-03-2015, 04:10 AM	#14
RobertDDL Whatever... Posts: 197 Karma: 1114225 Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Austria Device: PocketBook InkPad 840, Touch HD 2	Hitch, I mostly agree with your rant (except I'd say LibreOffice instead of MS Word), but it is a bit off the mark here, when we are talking about plain text. Plain text files are always readable, and can be created and edited with any editor, regardless of their particular design. When you make a plain text file, you have to make some design decisions: do I use length-limited lines or not? Do I ignore italics, or do I use some symbol to indicate them? Do I ignore scene breaks, or do I show them, and if so, how? Do I treat headings like any other lines of text, or do I distinguish them in some way? If so, how do I differentiate between heading levels? And so on... I'm not talking about markup languages, but you have to decide these questions -- even by ignoring them, you decide them one way or the other. No matter how you decide them, the text will be readable, and neither you nor the reader will be bound to any particular software or system, but some of these decisions may have some advantages or disadvantages for the reader (though, of course, they may have different preferences). I think that Markdown has made a very poor design decision regarding headings. I say that I'm doing it better, allowing headings of all levels to be easily grepped, and allowing the file to be easily converted to HTML and from there to ePub. What more can you want from a plain text file? But this is not a markup language, it's a style guide. It doesn't need to be adopted widely, because it's not in competition with anything else, and there are no compatibility issues whatever -- it's just plain text, with the design issues involved in any plain text decided in some particular way. So, really, I think that all these strong "we do not need another format, why don't you stay with what already exists" replies are not valid criticism. If you are happy with Markdown, use it. Otherwise, either ignore what I'm doing, or have a look at it and criticise it for its shortcomings and faults, but not for the mere fact that I'm not using Markdown or a subset of it, and that I stand up and say in mixed company what exactly I do instead.