The Glories of Plain Text

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2703

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-02-10 03:02:17

I fancy myself almost an expert on hierarchical clip managersócould there be a more ridiculous-sounding subject for expertise? Anyway, despite the tons of trivia I know about clip managers, I just discovered one that beats all of them. It has a feature set roughly co-extensive with ClipMate and it copies a lot of ClipMateís approach, but the interface is much cleaner and most importantly, it actually works consistently, even in the face of other applications vying for the clipboard. I think this may be because in its inner workings it separates pasting from the Windows clipboard.

It does cost $10 more than ClipMate. The program is called AceText by JGSoft, who also make the text editor EditPad Pro, if that means anything to anyone. AceText integrates with EditPad, which I think is a pretty gutsy move for a small company. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, like EditPad, AceText only does plain text. (Note your reaction.)

The thing that really surprises me is that I donít find the absence of formatting a draw back. Formatting today is probably best accomplished by using styles attached to document templates in your word processor of choice. Anything you store as text awaits instant formatting, if you have good style sheets set up.

I imagine that the flawless operation operation of AceText, as contrasted with the inevitably glitchy performance of other productsówell, itís my hunch, someone like Alex who actually knows something may disconfirmóthis flawless performance canít be obtained merely by a program almost completely free of bugs. Many of the glitches occur when handly formatted text. Plain text seems so much more tractable, just in terms of a zero failure rate for copying.

Iím not a Zoot user. I canít think of any use I would have for processing rules, and I don’t work with tons of data. But Iíve admired its prowess second-hand. Everyone assumes that its future lies in rich text, but Iím led to wonder if its abilities donít depend on the medium.

Iím also led to wonder whether BrainStorm is making the right choice in featuring rich text in the projected Pro edition. As styles and templates further permeate the culture of word processing, in my present mood Iím inclined to predict a renaissance of plain text.

Stephen R. Diamond

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