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I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
Dormouse:
Zettelkasten + LaTeX + VS Code = Productivity++ ?:
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/zettelkasten-latex-vs-code-productivity-a7deb650608e
-panzer (May 26, 2020, 01:43 PM)
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That was an interesting read.
Who knows if it will prove a productive approach? Seems to me there's a lot of automating and not so much thinking, with multiple break points in the system. And he recommended zettlr for those who liked markdown.
And I noticed the next post down was 'How to be a keyboard warrior' - which brings me neatly to my next point:
Dormouse:
WYSIWYG was much-loved but not so easy to achieve. Home users loved it, using mice and GUIs.
-Dormouse (May 26, 2020, 01:49 PM)
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... but programmers not so much. Possibly because they knew what it might hide. And they were keyboard warriors with masses of memorised shortcuts. Which saved them time as their hands never needed to leave the keyboard. Most journos too; early newspaper systems weren't great at GUI.
But that was never me. Despite using a typewriter since I was a child and teaching myself to touch type on one in my teens. Despite being a very fast typist. Most of the time my hands weren't near the keyboard and I was looking at the screen and thinking. When I was on the keyboard, I was typing words.
But preferably not using a word processor. I've always avoided those for actual writing as much as I can. Nothing to help me as a writer, many irritations interrupting my thinking. Liked outliners from the beginning because they gave a bit of organisation, faster access to my writing and irritated less.
The majority of people learned to use word processors at school and that's what was made available when they went to work. With GUIs.
But programmers had their text editors, keyboard shortcuts and numbered lines to help them navigate. And using them meant being used to working with syntax mixed visually with content.
And for my style of editing the mouse is faster than the keyboard.
Dormouse:
Now for some of the evangelised fallacies. I read a tale of how txt is permanent but complex document formats aren't because ability to read them is lost over time. All his wordstar documents gone.
In reality, I doubt he could still access his five and a quarter floppies, txt or not. Conveniently forgetting there's more than one encoding of txt.
And I bet I can find a way of converting his wordstar files, whichever version they were.
And explaining that Markdown was simply txt and would always be accessible.
Mmm.
I can imagine an Eureka moment in fifty years time when the Markdown archaeologist finally cracks an intractable file - "Ha, it's a Github flavour, with the Joplin variations and additions! "
Dormouse:
And possibly the key fallacy - Markdown is NOT readable.
It is decipherable but not readable.
Maybe it's different for programmers who are used to reading instructions mixed with content, but for most people it's not readable even they have learned the instructions.
It would be easy to do a little experiment.
A markdown file with a few a variety of text formats and a few headings. And 3 nouns formatted red and a different 3 formatted green.
Take twenty subjects who have learned markdown: give half the markdown version and half the published version. Compare reading speeds. The next day ask them all to recall the red words and then the green.
I'm sure that the difference in reading speeds will be substantial and that those seeing the words in colour will have a much greater recall.
The implication is that formatting instructions mixed with text impair both reading and processing. I accept programmers may be immune.
Most writers have periods of reading what they have written interspersed with periods of writing. My case is that Markdown interferes with that.
Personally, I just write text. Bits of formatting added later. If needed. Accepting Hemingway's maxim that writing should be separate from editing, if not the need to be drunk half the time. I don't care about document formats at this point and txt is fine. And text is what I want to look at, not markdown instructions.
My need for WYSIWYG is during editing, not writing. Then I need colour. And other things. And I need to actually see it, not just have it identified.
Dormouse:
Writing for the web is different. Fewer words, faster speed. And adding a bit of markdown can save faffing around later.
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