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37 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
37 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "Document Formats and Plaintext"
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date: 2022-05-19T21:24:52-04:00
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draft: false
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tags: []
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math: false
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---
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Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Google Docs, Libreoffice Writer all provide a method of writing and formatting text. This is then normally stored in a "binary" file. I put binary in quotes as they are often stored in a zip archive of XML files. However, because it's in a zip archive, I cannot use standard plaintext tools to search within the document.
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When would I need to search multiple files at once for a word? Well not only is this useful for programming to find usages of a function, I often use it to find out if I have written about a topic before.
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```bash
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grep -R chocolate
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```
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The command above returns the lines of files that contain the word "chocolate". As of the time of writing, I had no such occurrence in my blog directory. Until now, mwahaha.
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What's the solution then? To write everything in `.txt` files? Kind of actually. We'll write plaintext files but also include a bit of formatting. We can then *publish* the document by converting it to a webpage (HTML) or a PDF document. The most popular formatting technique is [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) (often has the extension `.md`). That's also the format that my blog posts are encoded in.
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One critique of Markdown is that the user does not have much control on the output presentation of the document. Tools like [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/) allow for custom stylesheets to control it a bit but it's still limited. In my view, the most powerful plaintext document format is [LaTex](https://www.latex-project.org/). Though it's not the simplest to learn.
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If you switch to a plaintext editor like notepad, vscode, vim, etc. it might not come with built in spell check. Luckily on linux, there's a helpful spell check program.
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```bash
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aspell check filetocheck.md
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```
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So what plaintext formats do I currently use on a day-to-day?
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- Blog posts: Markdown
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- Notes: Markdown or random scribbles on physical pieces of paper
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- Academic papers: LaTex
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- Presentations: LaTex (unless they need video)
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If you're interested in learning how to work with plaintext and other cool things, check out the [Plain Text Project](https://plaintextproject.online/) by [Scott Nesbitt](https://scottnesbitt.net/).
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