Conversation

One reason we don't have more interesting, quality structured text editors: it's *really* hard to implement table-stakes editing operations well, particularly on web. In this video, I attempt to arrow up/down and shift+up/down to select inter-line in 8 outliners. Very yikes.

1:45

14K views

245

Nathan Manousos

@trafnar

Oct 16, 2021

I’ve been exploring the approach of using pure plaintext but augmenting it with some controls in the margin. Because I know I can’t re-implement text editing to my own standards. I feel like this can be taken pretty far. My work so far: tasktxt.com

Nathan Manousos

@trafnar

Oct 16, 2021

I also built a little bookmark manager app with add/delete/edit/search/drag-drop features the secret is: the entire UI is a textarea, much like taskTXT. This is a kinda joke/prototype to explore the concept of using plain textarea as the UI

share.getcloudapp.com

This is really great, Nathan. I've been collecting some notes on interfaces of this kind, trying to feel out the edges. One thing I notice is that it seems they can only "hold" so much structure. e.g. multi-paragraph "items" are very difficult to negotiate

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Oct 19, 2021

It's interesting how—particularly as you introduce more functionality—they increasingly expose "parsing" and "syntax" to users.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Oct 19, 2021

Incidentally, is there a name for this paradigm? I've been calling it "decorated plaintext"—the aspiration to the core editing interactions and data fluidity of plaintext editors, but with some of the higher-level semantics/affordances of structured block editors.

Replying to

and

4:19 AM · Oct 19, 2021TweetDeck

Replying to

I’ve read this thread twice now and I think my brain has checked out for the day as I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but text editing is SUPER COMPLEX and why software like Notion feel “wrong.” It took an incredible effort to impl in Figma and is not perfect.

Rasmus Andersson

@rsms

Oct 19, 2021

Attributing meaning to arrays of values is another interesting aspect of computing in general. Like, parsing some plain text programming language. Essentially an exercise in grouping stuff. Not hard to do w/ 1D but gets trickier w/ more dimensions (like “rich text.”)

Show replies