kepanoJul 2, 2023

File over app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

Keep reading: https://stephanango.com/file-over-app

File over app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve an...

Steph Ango
Show threadRichard Carter, FCD HAS MOVED…Jul 2, 2023
@kepano Well said… Although the ability to read hieroglyphs was lost for a considerable time until very clever people managed to work out what they meant.
Show threadkepanoJul 2, 2023

@richardcarter a nuance of the term "read" — here I mean the ability to directly access the language, not necessarily parse it

language has its own encoding/decoding problem but that's somewhat outside of the scope of what I wanted to write about

Show threadRichard Carter, FCD HAS MOVED…
@kepano A fair point. I went Markdown for my notes a few years before Obsidian arrived on the scene and I was able to import them seamlessly. I’d learnt my lesson: all my notes for my first book had been lost (post-publication) inside an obsolete proprietary system. These days, if it isn’t open-data, I won’t touch it with a barge-pole! The notes for my next book all reside safely within Markdown/Obsidian.
Jul 2, 2023 at 10:49pmWeb
Show threadEpiphanic SynchronicityJul 2, 2023

@richardcarter @kepano I agree. Although they’re better than SaaS apps, I wouldn’t even be comfortable anymore keeping long-term/permanent notes in an app like Bear or Joplin that stores them in a local database, now that I can keep them directly accessible as individual plaintext files in standard file system folders.

I’m curious, though—what was your obsolete proprietary system?

Show threadRichard Carter, FCD HAS MOVED…Jul 3, 2023
@EpiphanicSynchronicity @kepano The beta of Bear 2 doesn't use a database, but a standard folder… I'm hoping this remains true when the app is finally released.
Show threadEpiphanic SynchronicityJul 3, 2023
@richardcarter @kepano I’m pretty sure Bear 2 still uses a database, and that they’re also working on a separate standalone markdown editor in the iA Writer/Typora category that will use individual .md files. Last I checked the latter, it didn’t even have an in-app library, so it’s unlikely to be a PKM app.
Show threadRichard Carter, FCD HAS MOVED…Jul 3, 2023
@EpiphanicSynchronicity Calling my old proprietary system 'obsolete' was a bit unfair. I used an early version of Microsoft OneNote. I've long since switched from PC to Mac, and OneNote has evolved considerably. There are probably ways to retrieve my old data, but it doesn't seem worth the hassle—even assuming I still have backups somewhere.