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Newbie working with plain text: best practices for formatting etc?
Matthew Chagnon | Jan 22 2008
Hey all, I've searched far and wide online and am really surprised not to find very much info on this (perhaps I'm using the wrong search terms!). After reading Bit Literacy, I decided that I wanted to starting using plain text files more at work, especially for notes. Unfortunately, years of reading 43F has enhanced my fiddly nature, and I'm more focused on trying to format my notes "correctly," or at least to have some sort of standard to stick to. Does anyone have any best practices (or web resources) for working with text on a page? Currently, I find text files difficult to read (and line breaks confusing). Any thoughts? 26 Comments
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 ReST, againSubmitted by agapow on January 23, 2008 - 5:00am.
A big second on restructured text. It's what I use as a default for my own notes and in email. The big wins over LaTeX is that it's easy to write and is very readable - it looks just like plaintext. It's more powerful than Markdown, is widespread and can easily be converted into other forms. And it's just a textfile. A small tip that applies to ReST and probably most other forms of markup: use a text editor that does soft wrap (e.g. TextMate, Scite) and write each paragraph on one big line that the editor silently wraps for you. This lets you write as quickly as possible without having to worry about ending lines and justifying paragraphs. » POSTED IN:
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