There’s a way for plain text to handle formatting too, in a way that’s lightweight and so easy to learn, you might already know it. And not just the basics - font, type size and spacing - but also things like footnotes, headers, and footers.
With the exception of email, virtually everything I write requires formatting. txt files? That’s not a “word processor,” it’s a “text editor.” And while it might work for techno-geeks who write code, it’s utterly useless for many of us in academia. In fact, it’s an objection that ProfHacker commenter iredale has made: In a future post, I plan to explain the virtues of plain text at greater length.īut there is one major objection to writing in plain text. Briefly, plain text is a great format to use because (1) it can be read by any computer or device (2) it’s future proof, since computers will always be able to read it (3) it can be synced to all your devices (4) it can be converted to virtually any format. We’ve mentioned some of them in earlier ProfHacker posts, such as Alex’s about JDarkRoom and Jason’s about nvALT. There are a lot of reasons to love plain text. (Linux users already know what I’m talking about.)
John gruber nvalt Pc#
txt file that contains nothing but text without formatting-the kind of file that your PC probably opens in Notepad and that your Mac opens in TextEdit. There’s a simple idea about productivity and writing: almost anything you need to do, you can do in a plain text file.