If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown
If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown
Why and how to preserve digital content in plaintext format for long-term accessibility and reuse
I migrated from mediawiki to markdown in git 8 years ago and never looked back. The ability to publish to any number of static site hosts, and use any number of editors, some that have preview mode, is rad. Data liberty, data portability, wide support, easy to convert, easy to grep, good enough for 95% of written notes.
My biggest gripe is poor support for tables of data.
That website was the fastest loading website I’ve ever visited.
I felt like I was back in the 2000s when I first got cable internet, but before ads took over everything.
That thing loaded before I even click the link.
You made me click the link out of pure skepticism. You were not exaggerating.
You'd like the mcmaster-carr website.
Static webpage generator like Hugo, probably.
You will probably be a fan of https://kagi.com/, then. I know it’s what I first noticed and what stood out to me a couple years back…
It loaded quicker than this comment section on my Lemmy app
Interesting stuff, but my main takeaway is that very little of my output is worth keeping! (Who's going to need out-of-context Star Trek shitposts in 20 years?)
I have a tendency to jump between different note-taking services. Markdown seems like it could maybe be a cure for me.. By now i have no idea where I should look for a note I know I’ve taken, is it in notion, onenote, apple notes, and so on..
I've tried a few different note taking apps but I'm sticking with obsidian even though it is not open source because it saves everything in a simple folder structure as markdown files and simple images. I like that even without the program you can just search for the names of the images or notes on your system.
I use Obsidian with Zettel Notes on my phone to access and edit the MD files in Obsidian, as it is much faster for dashing off a quick note. ZN also has tools that allow you to save a web page or selection as MD which is very handy indeed.
Handwritten HTML with limited tags works just as well for many purposes (just forbid div, span, and a few others and the complexity you see in most webpages evaporates). The important part is using a text-based format from which information can be extracted even if the fancier display protocols become obsolete.
Which is markdown
Not really. HTML has a formal standard and definition that covers how to properly handle most corner cases that can arise when displaying it. Markdown has no overarching formal standard and exists in multiple dialects which are not always compatible with each other.
On the gripping hand, HTML involves more keystrokes (and technically speaking you need to include a bit of boilerplate in the file for it to be proper HTML). So it depends on whether you're willing to do a bit more typing to make sure that no one can possibly confuse your italics with boldface.
Man alive, all that time I wasted learning LaTeX in that case. Supports tables properly, "floats" pictures and figures about without messing up the flow of text, exceptional support for equations, beautiful printed output...
Suffers from a completely insane macro-writing language, and its markup is more intrusive in the text than markdown's is. Also, if you have very specific formatting output requirements (for a receiving publication, for instance) then it can be somewhat painful to whip into shape. Plain-text gang forever, though.
haaave you heard about our lord and saviour Typst?
same layout algorithm as LaTeX, but:
- simpler markup
- sane, consistent scripting language
- fast compilation, including incremental updates so you can have a process watching your file and instantly create a new PDF on changes
- easy collaborative editing through their web app
- actually understandable error messages
Now that sounds interesting!
No print it, everything digital needs a fairly complex machinery to work.
Do both and use the digital copy to print a new physical copy every x years.
Me with folders upon folders of plain .txt:
See, this is why I'm sticking with pen and paper for the really important stuff.
No offence to the apps themselves, I find them especially useful when I need to transfer info from one device to another. But I do not trust anything purely digital for long-term to permanent archiving, especially not Cloud solutions.
Also significantly more reliable in case said info need not see the light of day. Just sayin'.
Paper is just about the easiest thing to lose over the years and it certainly doesn't last forever. You are one bit of water damage, one fire, one break-in,... away from losing it all permanently with paper.
the sauna picture was a weird example though...
Was Is
To this day, most of what I do is just in plaintext with indentation and - denoting lists. I can still read my notes from literal decades ago without issue. Markdown adds an unnecessary step for my personal notekeeping.
AFAIK there's no way to format an underline in markdown.
Anyone know of a workaround?
Think html renders. May not be exactly right but where I'd start
<s>There will be a few tickets available at the box office tonight.</s>