写作方法2022blog.miris.design
不要只用纯文本写作：持久性与真实性的取舍
Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)
导读
作者从「纯文本」这一写作圈信条出发，追问不同媒介承载的信息类型与「真实性」问题：文字简洁耐久，却也可能丢掉语气、动作、场景等更丰富的层次。对写作者来说，这篇文章值得一读的地方在于，它提醒我们选择形式本身就是表达决策：你保存的不只是内容，还有未来读者解码它的方式。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把「只写纯文本」理解为「尽量用最简单、最开放的格式」，而不是一条死板的教条；关键是让未来的自己还能打开它。
- 02
选择形式前先问：我要传达的是静态细节，还是动作、语气、身体语言这类动态信息？后者往往需要更丰富的媒介。
- 03
纯文本加一点 Markdown 标记（强调、结构）是兼顾耐久与可读性的稳妥做法，比依赖专有编辑器安全得多。
- 04
保存作品时同时考虑载体与语境：未来的读者缺少你今天的假设和背景，写作时要为「后来者」补上解码所需的线索。
HN 评论精选
不同媒介传递的信息类型不同，字节多少不等于信息量或真实性。
作者谈「真实性」其实触及了更深的问题：不同媒介承载的是不同类型的信息。我给学生做过一个练习：一张 Amelia Earhart 的高清照片，和一段她登机、微笑挥手的模糊短视频，两者字节数相同。有人觉得照片细节更「保真」，也有人从视频里的步态、挥手和握手的姿态中感受到更多她的为人。可见信息可以是静态的、动态的，甚至更高阶的元动态，取决于后来解码它的文化能否带上同一套假设。
nonrandomstring查看英文原文
This essay is actually deeper than its surface appearance, about text versus other formats. It's about semantics and richness of content, although I am not sure Miris fully grasps what s/he is wrestling with. The author invokes the concept of "authenticity", and that's where it gets interesting. I used to set my students a question about information content in a class on the philosophy of procedural representation. We had a very high resolution photo of the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, and a short grainy video clip of her getting into a plane and smiling and waving. My question was: Which one of these two media conveys more information about Amelia? One gave extraordinary detail of her face, eyes, and seemed to many was a much better "fidelity" document. Others noticed that although you couldn't see her face in the video, you could feel from her gait, waving, body language and the way she shook hands _much more_ about her than from the static photo. Both files are the same size in bytes. So which one has more "information"? Which one is more "authentic"? Not to attempt to answer here with a deep dive into phenomenology, but each carries a different kind of information, which can be static, dynamic, or meta-dynamic in higher orders relative to a matrix of assumptions that must be carried forward in parallel by the culture that wants to decode the message later. I like that Miris tries to explore this by questioning the richness of text. But maybe the question doesn't hold up well under those conditions of investigation - because one might say that a great poet using only a few words might capture a landscape better than a painting, but if our culture drifts toward a visual one where poetry is no longer understood we cannot say that the medium itself degraded.
「写纯文本」的真实含义是「用最简单开放的格式」，重点是避免被专有格式锁死。
这个反驳有点钻牛角尖。没人真的主张一切都该是纯文本，那只是个简写。真正的论点是「用尽可能简单、开放的格式」。没人让你把每张照片的情绪反应转录成文字再删掉图片；但如果你五十岁、七十五岁还想看这些照片，存成 JPEG 比存成 PSD 好，除了云端之外再存一份自己能访问的硬盘更好。纯文本是「用开放格式」的简写，因为对这类读者来说，从源码到日记，纯文本都是最常用的格式，但这个道理适用于几乎任何东西：一旦把自己锁进专有格式或专有编辑器，长期来看你几乎一定会丢数据。
thomascgalvin查看英文原文
This argument feels ... not quite like a strawman, but more pedantic than I think it needs to be. I don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand. The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible." Nobody is suggesting you go through all of your photos, transcribe your emotional reaction to each picture, and then delete the image. But, if you want to view those same photos when you're fifty years old, or seventy-five, you're better off storing them as a JPEG than a PSD, and you're better off storing them on a hard drive you have access to in addition to whatever cloud they're currently occupying. "Write plain text" is a shorthand for "use open formats." Because so much of what this audience does is test-based, plain text is the most common format we use, from source code to journaling, but that message applies to pretty much anything: if you lock yourself into a proprietary format, or a proprietary editor, you will almost certainly lose data over the long term.
只有部分旧专有格式还能读，所以带轻量标记的纯文本仍然最可靠。
八十、九十年代那些专有格式「有一部分」至今还能读，这本身已经在造成实际问题：因为并非全部都能读。所以纯文本，最好再加上 Markdown 之类对强调和结构的提示，仍然远胜于我能想到的任何替代方案。
llarsson查看英文原文
That "some" proprietary formats from the 80's and 90's are still readable is already causing real problems: because not *all* are. So text, possibly with Markdown or similar hints regarding emphasis and structure, is still vastly better than any alternative I can think of.
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