by stared on 2/22/25, 9:52 AM with 273 comments
by tengwar2 on 2/26/25, 12:38 AM
I prefer RTF for two main reasons:
* I can't express simple formatting such as "make this text red" in Markdown. No, I don't mean "accentuate this text and leave the decision on how it looks to someone else", I really do mean "make this text red". I do a lot of public speaking, and I want to keep to certain conventions which are easy to read fast.
* Most of the time I am writing text, not reading a version after it goes through a formatter, so I prefer to see it formatted on screen. That's really a limitation on Markdown editors, but it's almost universal so for my point of view, it counts.
by Evidlo on 2/25/25, 11:36 PM
For file-tagging, I would consider TMSU [0] instead of writing bespoke tools. (ideally we would just use xattrs, but the world isn't ready for that)
[0]: https://tmsu.org/
by hartator on 2/25/25, 11:54 PM
GitHub-flavored Markdown is so popular because you can really easy inline them. You don't have to worry about storing them, linking them correctly, and you can even paste to the Markdown field.
There is no elegant solution like this in actual Markdown.
by tqwhite on 2/26/25, 1:50 PM
I literally have a footlocker filled with old disk drives (remember, since 1979!) and I have never, ever gone back more than a few years, hell, more than a year.
Now that disks are big, I keep a lot of old stuff. I have, eg, screenshots dating back to 2015. Email before then. And so so much more.
I have never gone back more than a few years.
I will continue to archive because I must but, Old Person to Young People... Don't put too much effort into long term availability. It's not a good investment.
by kreelman on 2/26/25, 12:56 AM
For me, everything swirls in an enjoyable vortex towards org-mode.
- Literate Programming, tangle/weave
- Export to DocX, PDF, HTML
- Org-Roam
- Time Management.
Several things mentioned above are day to day. I think spectacular things are often made up of collections of useful everyday things.
by jon_richards on 2/26/25, 12:24 AM
by geokon on 2/26/25, 7:05 AM
The only markup I'm finding with a grammar is MediaWiki (sort of..)
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec
Even Djot doesn't seem to have one. Weird..
by asielen on 2/25/25, 11:48 PM
So while my notes may rely on some personal scripts to get there most value out of them, I strongly value that they are still plain text and I can always move them into a new workflow if I need to.
by normalaccess on 2/25/25, 11:30 PM
If anyone has a good solution I'm all ears.
by ambivalence on 2/25/25, 11:33 PM
I use FSNotes today on macOS and iOS. Both apps are open source, both use well-structured .textbundle directories that separate Markdown content from JSON metadata and binary attachments. Synchronization happens through Git. It's a very powerful combination.
Ironically, I wrote a blog post some 8 years ago about this very subject. That blog post is now offline.
by xenodium on 2/26/25, 1:17 AM
Here's a demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SykbiVweYH8
by roxolotl on 2/25/25, 11:41 PM
by jazz9k on 2/26/25, 12:43 AM
by headcanon on 2/25/25, 11:25 PM
Ultimately I'm trying to index my "window" to the web as embedded content in a vector store. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it yet but I imagine it will be a component of some kind of personal agent system I can use to reference old info and help as a writing tool or as an "idea generator" of some kind. I'll likely end up not using most of it but you never know.
I've scraped about 10k markdown files which has created a ~10gb chromadb instance so far. Eventually I'll probably create separate collections based on domain, and filter down items that I care about more.
by hamsterbase on 2/26/25, 2:58 AM
That's why I've come to prefer formats like webarchive, mhtml, or single HTML files for archiving. They're incredibly faithful to the original content - you get almost perfect rendering of the original page, complete with styling and layout. Plus, they can capture stuff behind paywalls or on logged-in pages, which is a huge plus.
The real challenge, though, isn't just about saving the content. It's about making that saved content useful. These archive formats are great for preservation, but they can quickly become a mess of unorganized files that are hard to search through or make sense of.
I think the key is finding ways to organize and interact with these archives more effectively. Things like full-text search across all your saved pages, the ability to add notes or highlights directly on the archived content, and smart tagging systems could go a long way. And it'd be really powerful if we could integrate these archives with other knowledge management tools we use.
I develop a tool called HamsterBase that seems to address a lot of these issues we've been discussing. t's a local-first app. That means all your data stays on your own device - no need to worry about your personal archives being stored on someone else's servers. There's no sign-up or registration required, which is refreshing in today's cloud-centric world.
by misterspaceman on 2/26/25, 12:54 AM
Google Docs now supports Markdown files, so if I need to convert the Markdown file to Word or PDF, I just open it in Docs and download it in the format I need. (Pandoc also works for this, as the author mentions). Converting HTML to Markdown can also be done in Docs: copy and paste the web page text into Google Docs, and download the file as Markdown.
For mobile, I use the DriveSync app to download my notes (Markdown) folder to my phone. Then I use Obsidian to open and edit the files.
by xyst on 2/26/25, 12:58 AM
Very easy to search notes and even have a dedicated folder for diary entries.
by huqedato on 2/26/25, 12:18 AM
by downut on 2/25/25, 11:40 PM
Sure, keep your archive text in markdown (which one? a dumb person asks). But I'd recommend managing it with org-mode, it doesn't really care what format your text is in.
(Yeah I saw the footnote mentioning org-mode but that reads to me that org-mode's reference there is entirely about the markup flavor.)
by aosaigh on 2/25/25, 10:37 PM
by kreelman on 2/26/25, 12:40 AM
For me, everything swirls in a lovely vortex towards org-mode. - Literate Programming, tangel/weave - Export to DocX, PDF, HTML - Org-Roam - Time Management.
by oneeyedpigeon on 2/26/25, 10:25 AM
by jbd0 on 2/26/25, 2:58 PM
by drivingmenuts on 2/26/25, 2:46 AM
(Don't answer that - there's always one asshole who would)
by gerdesj on 2/26/25, 1:12 AM
MW gets you a massively scalable doc store that does not need much room. Most MW instances are MySQL/MariaDB backed and the schema etc is very well described.
Keep it plain text for "notes" but a MW will be easily discoverable for quite some time from now.
by kjs3 on 2/26/25, 12:36 AM
by whatever1 on 2/26/25, 9:24 AM
Can we have a damn math keyboard and proper character encoding instead of doing shenanigans with latex / office equation editor ?
Why in this exact text box I cannot type a differential equation ?
by runevault on 2/26/25, 12:52 AM
by galkk on 2/26/25, 8:51 AM
Tables, in particular, just suck, especially if you want to have even slight formatting inside of the cells.
Unfortunately, it’s either plain-text-readable or rich representation. Pick your poison.
by ThinkBeat on 2/26/25, 12:23 AM
I have one of those big dvd "catalogs" that takes 4 discs per side of a page.
Keep one at home and one at my parents' place.
I trust them more than usb-sticks. Though that may be irrational.
But the time for burning files to dvd seems almost over. It is hard /impossible to buy a computer with a dvd drive.
That is no problem for me since I have a collection fo externals as well as internals. and life is good now since blank dvd media is cheap .
But again, you need a dvd reader, and in the future, that may become difficult.
by t_mann on 2/26/25, 12:46 AM
by Beijinger on 2/26/25, 3:50 AM
I save everything interesting. I have a data folder with letters a-z in it. Something interesting might be saved in HTML or PDF under data/a/ai/programming
Folders have a problem because the same thing could be saved under data/p/programming/ai
But it is a start. For everything else, there is recoll. https://www.recoll.org/
by kmarc on 2/26/25, 6:06 AM
I used to use Joplin, lately switched to Obsidian. Both offer this functionality.
by Cilvic on 2/26/25, 10:44 AM
by abetancort on 2/26/25, 3:13 AM
by mirawelner on 2/27/25, 11:02 PM
by paulryanrogers on 2/26/25, 12:10 AM
by TheMode on 2/26/25, 1:26 AM
by Sincere6066 on 2/26/25, 7:03 AM
by todotask on 2/26/25, 5:41 AM
by scubbo on 2/26/25, 1:20 AM
I know what they mean - "running applications that you maintain and deploy yourself, on hardware/platforms that you don't" - but this is strange, to my eyes. If it's running on someone else's hardware (whatever it is), then it's not self-*hosted*, surely? It's self-owned, but not self-hosted?
by hamsterbase on 2/26/25, 2:57 AM
That's why I've come to prefer formats like webarchive, mhtml, or single HTML files for archiving. They're incredibly faithful to the original content - you get almost perfect rendering of the original page, complete with styling and layout. Plus, they can capture stuff behind paywalls or on logged-in pages, which is a huge plus.
The real challenge, though, isn't just about saving the content. It's about making that saved content useful. These archive formats are great for preservation, but they can quickly become a mess of unorganized files that are hard to search through or make sense of.
I think the key is finding ways to organize and interact with these archives more effectively. Things like full-text search across all your saved pages, the ability to add notes or highlights directly on the archived content, and smart tagging systems could go a long way. And it'd be really powerful if we could integrate these archives with other knowledge management tools we use.
It's an interesting problem space, and I think there's a lot of room for innovation in how we approach personal web archiving and knowledge management.
by gnuser on 2/26/25, 1:46 PM
by k__ on 2/26/25, 12:27 AM
by profsummergig on 2/26/25, 1:38 AM
I use VSCode for markdown.
Obsidian's been coming up on the radar often.
This post finally made me try it out.
I like it a lot.
But there's one reason I won't be using it as my main driver for markdown files: I can't open files that are not in a vault. I have markdown files everywhere on my drive. And I don't want to make the entire drive a vault (for various reasons).
Obsidian configurable as...
1) my default file handler for markdown files
2) capable of opening and saving markdown files in any location on my PC
...would be sweet. (From my research, it can't do these currently.)
by yawnxyz on 2/26/25, 5:16 AM
by croes on 2/26/25, 1:02 AM
by briandear on 2/26/25, 6:15 AM
by eviks on 2/26/25, 2:39 AM
Just pick a more relevant format for contrast to see that this is no feature! It's not like PDF is the only alternative
by g8oz on 2/26/25, 4:36 AM
by zackham on 2/26/25, 1:38 AM
I can get by just fine with that system, but a handful of months back I started wanting software again. Reminders, task wrangling, workflows around taking meeting notes, taking and processing transcripts of talking through ideas, automated daily and weekly checkins with summaries, project work logs, managing lists of things to talk about with people, the list goes on....
Same reasons I have always reached for software, and the same reasons I wrote my own system a few times over. But this time I had some new thoughts:
- I want this to have a chance at being my last system. For that, I must be able to read/edit the data without special software. I settled on committing to building software that interfaces with folders of Markdown files exclusively. I could use Obsidian to cover any gaps and get work done immediately–I don't need my software to do it all right away.
- I want to own as much of my recorded activity/thoughts as possible, so I can drop it into new AI models, giving them a ton of context about me and what I'm up to, and avoid getting vendor locked to OpenAI.
- I want ubiquitous access to the system, which means it's gotta be easily used from a phone.
7k LOC later and I've got a Telegram bot with a plugin architecture and a pile of plugins that implement everything I've described and more. The plugin arch means there's a defined interface and every new piece of functionality never ends up with more than 1k LOC in a file. My objective was to structure the project specifically so I could avoid the pitfalls of AI generated code as projects get large. Everything isolated with well defined integration points.
I chose Telegram because they have a great API, supporting custom keyboards for quick actions, audio input for taking voice memos that my system transcribes, and reaching out to me with reminders/requests on whatever device I'm on.
The result is thousands of messages that have translated into a nicely organized Obsidian vault. Couldn't be happier and think there's a chance I'll live with this thing for the foreseeable future–and I can always swap out the interface away from Telegram, build a proper frontend, or drop it altogether and be left with my Markdown files.
If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share what I've got. Just my private project that I'm reaping a lot of benefit from.
Here's a quick dump of some of my plugin commands to get a flavor of what I'm talking about: https://gist.github.com/zackham/3c2d061e6dd0127958c913329aa0...
by smm11 on 2/26/25, 1:57 AM
text.txt
Readable in everything, since forever.