mirror of
https://github.com/Brandon-Rozek/website.git
synced 2024-11-29 03:07:05 -05:00
39 lines
No EOL
2.3 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
No EOL
2.3 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
date: 2022-05-19 21:24:52-04:00
|
|
draft: false
|
|
math: false
|
|
medium_enabled: true
|
|
medium_post_id: b339b9d9793b
|
|
tags:
|
|
- Documentation
|
|
title: Document Formats and Plaintext
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
grep -R chocolate
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
aspell check filetocheck.md
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
So what plaintext formats do I currently use on a day-to-day?
|
|
|
|
- Blog posts: Markdown
|
|
- Notes: Markdown or random scribbles on physical pieces of paper
|
|
- Academic papers: LaTex
|
|
- Presentations: LaTex (unless they need video)
|
|
|
|
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/). |