{"id":9754,"date":"2023-05-24T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T12:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/?p=9754"},"modified":"2023-07-31T14:21:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T19:21:47","slug":"keep-it-simple-text-kist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/2023\/keep-it-simple-text-kist","title":{"rendered":"Keep It Simple Text (KIST)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- Keep It Simple Text (KIST) Markup --><\/p>\n<p><!-- paste the html code below directly into wordpress --><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/mdpaths.com\/kist\/\" target=\"KIST\" rel=\"noopener\">KIST<\/a> combines the best elements of various <em>plain text<\/em> markup languages I&#8217;ve used or developed over the past forty years. I assume the source text must be <em>easily understood<\/em> by casual readers. To the extent possible I exploit conventions already used by plain text typists (in email for example). The most basic of these conventions are:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Separate paragraphs, headings, lists, etc. with <em>blank lines<\/em>.<\/li><li>Precede headings with <em>pound signs<\/em> (#).<\/li><li>Precede list items with <em>tabs<\/em>.<\/li><li>Bracket words for emphasis with <em>asterisks<\/em> (*).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<em>KIST<\/em> aspires to the &#8220;Minimal Ink Principle&#8221; proposed by Edward Tufte in 1983: &#8220;The ratio of ink that conveys information vs the total ink used should approach unity.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<em>KIST<\/em> aspires to &#8220;fail gracefully&#8221; when something isn&#8217;t quite right.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nIn the beginning there was <em>Text<\/em>. By &#8220;Text&#8221; I mean the digital representation of characters from the major phonetic languages in use today. And because I&#8217;m writing in English, I will focus there. Things first come into focus with the &#8220;American Standard Code for Information Interchange&#8221; (ASCII) back in 1961. It represented all the characters found on typewriters of the time (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, with assorted punctuation). ASCII is embedded in modern encoding schemes such as Unicode and UFT-8. Various systems evolved to process and display text on screens and paper.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nThen there was <em>HyperText<\/em>&#8211;the ability to <em>link<\/em> words to information in other locations. Many developers proposed hypertext systems (myself included), but none dominated until &#8220;HyperText Markup Language&#8221; (HTML) came on the scene in 1980. After five major revisions it has become the de facto standard for most electronic publishing.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nFor all its strengths HTML is somewhat hard to write freehand. It has complex syntactical rules that are easy to break (the ubiquitous &#8220;unclosed tag&#8221; problem for example). <em>Writers want to write<\/em>&#8211;without focusing on a language intended to be read only by computers. So programmers immediately began inventing ways to <em>generate<\/em> HTML from other formats. This <a href=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/Tools\/Misc_filters.html\" target=\"1996 list from CERN\" rel=\"noopener\">1996 list from CERN<\/a> has over 80 entries, including my own MTX.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Synthesis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<em>KIST<\/em> combines the best ideas from several sources:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>MTX (paragraphs, headings, lists)<\/li><li>TSV (tab separated values, tables)<\/li><li>Email (block quoting)<\/li><li>Action Journaling (task lists)<\/li><li>HTML (hypertext, etc.)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Examples<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nA simple document structure:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">  Title\n  # Heading 1\n  ...content...\n  ## Subheading 1a\n  ...content...\n  #Heading 2\n  ...etc...<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nNested lists:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">    Fruit\n        apple\n        banana\n        orange\n    Veggies\n        carrot\n        rutabaga<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nAn inline image:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">  ^Flower Photo(flower.jpg)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nA hypertext link:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">  A line with a ^link(more.html) to more info.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My History of Textual Tinkering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>1988 <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/hypertext-before-the-world-wide-web\" target=\"HYTEXT\">HYTEXT<\/a> Hypertext Publishing System for MS-DOS<\/li><li>1989 Conversion of Medical Textbooks with <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/AWK\" target=\"AWK\">AWK<\/a> (NLM Fellowship)<\/li><li>1996 <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/mdpaths.com\/kist\/mtx-format.txt\" target=\"MTX\">MTX<\/a> Marked TeXt for Web Publishing (U of Fla)<\/li><li>2000s <a href=\"https:\/\/mdpaths.com\/aj\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Action Journaling<\/a> for Paper, Computer &amp; Web<\/li><li>2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/tabletop-demo-table.png\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/tabletop-demo-table.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">TableTop<\/a> &#8211; Table Manipulation App<\/li><li>2020 Keep It Simple Text (<a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/mdpaths.com\/kist\/\" target=\"KIST\">KIST<\/a>)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KIST combines the best elements of various plain text markup languages I&#8217;ve used or developed over the past forty years. I assume the source text must be easily understood by casual readers. To the extent possible I exploit conventions already used by plain text typists (in email for example). The most basic of these conventions &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/2023\/keep-it-simple-text-kist\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Keep It Simple Text (KIST)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,32,18],"tags":[527,528],"class_list":["post-9754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-programming","category-technology","tag-markup-language","tag-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9754"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9830,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754\/revisions\/9830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}