Here is an interesting “thinking in text” language I just came across:
https://margin.love/#/?id=margin
Any thoughts? I like it. I’ve been thinking a lot about just plain text without any syntax highlighting lately. I think maybe that’s my favorite part of the Margin examples… no syntax highlighting and a fixed width font is pretty nice sometimes.
I like this a lot.
( and now at last I feel free to admit that I gave up using hyphens and project colons in my TaskPaper files a long time ago : -)
( plain indentation feels very clear and uncluttered to me )
Yeah, not just you! I’ve been using TaskPaper to work on app model design and I ended up disabling syntax highlighting so that I could just look at structure and names without seeing different fonts.
I also thing syntax highlighting often encourages plain text that’s harder to read. For example a case that comes up often with TaskPaper is the choice between:
Project 1:
blah, blah
Project 2:
blah, blah
and
Project 1:
blah, blah
Project 2:
blah, blah
I think the second is clearly better “plain text” in the sense that it’s easier to read in “any” plain text editor. But TaskPaper’s bolding of project headings sorta encourages the first no space option… and then things get even more complex when user does want some space, so they need to start applying complex styles that add space after project lines.
Depends on the type of style you prefer. I am very visual and I need code highlighting. I love Ulysses and Typora (code mode) for that reason (looking forward to nvultra.) I just need the colors. Weirdly that is one of the reasons I moved to markdown. Because how it highlighted and emphasized different hierarchies.
At the same time, I understand why other people would hate it (for instance, my wife hates distracting elements in everything.)
I think it gets to the point where one would have to ask. Why not use just use plaintext? If there is a killer app that manages to convince people that one can have his cake (more plaintext like) and eat it too (be able to transform that simple text file into pdf’s with styles or present the text into something people would love) the app would be revolutionary. But there are limitations. For example. I kept trying to figure out how to transform TaskPaper into something I could use for a tickler file; when I realized that it would just be easier to use an app for that case (many apps can do this, and do it well.) Oh Well!!
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that I never want syntax highlighting… for me it’s essential when working with complex syntaxes such as code.
But for me it also gets in the way often. I often use text editor to work on ideas. Different parts, edit, try various combinations. That’s where syntax highlighting gets in the way for me… though it’s also where outline style structure is still really useful.
I like it too.
I’ve been doing more and more plain-text note taking and Margin’s simplicity & generality looks very attractive.
I wish I could that too, but then I cannot do things like Go To Project in TaskPaper anymore…
Yes, I’m totally enamored with this project. I’m an occasional user of Taskpaper and FoldingText. In fact, I came here after considering the differences between the Margin spec with what FoldingText does for me. I love the less prescriptive syntax and flexibility of annotations.