Sacha on the Power of Plain Text

Sacha Chua has a nice post on the power of plain text. There are, she says, three main ways of storing text¹:

• The Heavy Weight Methods
  This is mainly database systems. Chua says she uses these tools mainly when she’s building software for someone else.
• The Medium Weight Methods
  Chua mentions spreadsheets specifically but I suppose it could also include word processors or various note taking or GTD tools.
• Plain Text
  This is her preferred method when she’s building tools for herself. Chua says that as she learns more about Org mode and Org tables, she is using this method more and more.

I’ve written before that I use plain text and Org mode almost exclusively for my data storage and processing needs. As Chua says it’s easy to work with—you can manipulate it using standard tools such as grep, diff, awk, perl or even Emacs. If you need more specialized processing, you can almost always get the job done with a bit of Elisp. In any event, it’s sure to be easier than dealing with a proprietary format even you have documentation on that format.

One of the nice things about Org mode is that it has several functions that make it easier to work with the data in an Org file. Although she’d doubtlessly demur, Chua has at least a journeyman’a knowledge of that. I’ve written a few times about her use of Elisp to process data she’s holding in Org files. You can learn a lot by reading those posts.

Chua mentions some of these Org functions in this latest post and that’s reason enough to give it a read. She hints that she’ll be using and, presumably, writing about Org mode more in the future. That’s good news because I always learn something interesting when she does.