Something to read and ponder

[robkelk]

(trying a fourth time...)

http://www.pelicancrossing.net/netwars/ ... iting.html

It's a bit stream-of-consciousness, but it has to be - where the column ends up and how it gets there are equally important.

Thoughts?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Labster]

People use word processors besides vi and emacs?

Just kidding. While I do use vim, most of the time I use TextWrangler.app on my Mac, and occasionally gEdit on Linux. They're not about fancy editing, they're about getting words (or code) on the page with less distractions. And they both have a form of tabbed editing so I can easily refer to multiple notes files. If I want to do fancy markup, I just add it at the end in HTML -- probably not the best for non-coders, but it works for me. I think that there are plenty of tools out there for writing other than M$ word, but that people are convinced it's the only viable format.

Also, about that that link to a Mac program: No screenshots? No download. Storing text in SGML (in this case HTML) isn't actually a new idea, but it's not a bad idea either.

The second issue addressed is metadata. While there many not be simple way to keep the metadata associated with what you're writing, git is a very useful tool. While it's designed for software, it works with any kind of text. It tracks versions, keep a detailed history, and keeps everything in your project associated and portable.

Keeping the ability to read older documents is known concern in the tech community, because we have already lost some of our history this way. But just look at the range of document types supplied by Project Gutenberg. People are working to make sure our data can be read, packaged for analysis, and not locked into one format.

So my thoughts -- it's an okay blog entry, but mostly random musings and not a fully developed or researched idea. I don't see the same dichotomies (business vs. philosophy; global web vs. splinternet) as the author, I just see problems to be solved. And so do the people developing the next-gen crypto tools.
-- ∇×V

[Bob Schroeck]

The second issue addressed is metadata.  While there many not be simple way to keep the metadata associated with what you're writing, git is a very useful tool.  While it's designed for software, it works with any kind of text.  It tracks versions, keep a detailed history, and keeps everything in your project associated and portable.

I use svn (Apache Subversion) myself -- have for a couple years now -- and it's just the most useful thing.  In particular portability -- I have at least four different machines I write on, on different hardware and OSes, and there's an svn client for all of them that keeps them synchronized. 
And never again will I suffer from a file that got lost or blown away and not noticed until well after all the alternate copies have been overwritten.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bluemage]

The only secure machine is a machine that won't turn on.  Barring that, don't hook it up to a network, and monitor who can connect things to it.
I've found I write best in Wordpad, oddly enough.  Tried other things, Focuswriter being the most distraction-free of them, but they just didn't work as well.  Distractions will happen when I'm on a computer, guaranteed.  What makes me most productive isn't hiding them away, but enabling me to solve them quickly, and get back to writing.  'Distraction-free' writing environments make me less productive.
As for file preservation, I do most of my writing at work.  Save the newest version to my USB drive every night, and take it home.  There, it goes onto my laptop and desktop.  I'm not sure I can lose it.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.