Filed under: Text
One text file is all you need
Here's
an idea: instead of dealing with lots of different programs, formats
and files, why not keep all of your data – contact info, calendar, the
draft of your dissertation – in one mammoth text file? That's what O'Reilly's Giles Turnbull
is doing, and it actually doesn't seem like that crazy an idea,
especially if you work on multiple machines. You only have to worry
about syncing one file, your data is platform-independent, and you can
easily pinpoint the info you need using anything from grep to
Spotlight. Of course, this one file won't include your email,
bookmarks, spreadsheets, photos, music or any other files that depend
on specific software. But for the rest of your stuff, why not shove it
all into one big file and let grep sort it out?
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
markp said 10:15PM on 8-09-2005
Before it got bloated/fragmented into too many things, Treepad was a simple application that lent itself very well to the "everything in a single file" idea. Maybe OPML will be useful for this as well...
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Awayken said 10:41AM on 8-10-2005
This would be a great idea if Windows had "grep". :(
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Kosi2801 said 2:55AM on 8-10-2005
This approach (everything in one file) is exactly what TiddlyWiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com) does but as an extremely interactive HTML page it's much more usable than a simple textfile and grep. At least in my opinion.
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nick santilli said 12:35PM on 8-10-2005
@Awayken:
Try WinGrep. Works like a charm!
http://www.wingrep.com/
Reply
Christopher Michael said 1:19PM on 8-10-2005
The Treepad idea falls down because it requires (besides, uh, purchase) the app to be installed on all client machines. TiddlyWiki is much closer to being the "it thing" since all it requires is a browser. It still seems a bit fragile, it won't run on less than full DHTML browers, wiki syntax isn't totally natural, and it requires a wikiword for each concept (not difficult/unreasonable, tho), but all that said, I hold a lot of hope for that app.
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