#plaintextexperiment — Public Fediverse posts

Two years ago I embarked on a challenge: to only access my digital notes with TextEdit and iA Writer on my #Mac. It was an enlightening and a frustrating experience!

Two days ago I decided to revisit the #plainTextExperiment by temporarily putting #Obsidian away again. What happened next taught me an important lesson about interoperability that I hadn't picked up the first time around.

#ptpl

Medium https://miscellaneplans.medium.com/the-3-levels-of-plain-text-productivity-and-why-level-2-is-the-sweet-spot-d7177122e4b1
Blog https://ellanew.com/2025/11/24/ptpl-183-the-3-levels-of-plain-text-productivity

I'm one week in to using One Big Text File #OBTF. It's a different kind of simple to the one-file-per-idea system I've been using (and haven't yet given up).

Personal experiment: Can OBTF be a worthy companion to my paper Bullet Journal? So far that's a firm yes, but one week isn't long enough to know for sure.

Looking forward to observing any friction in what's meant to be a frictionless approach.

#BulletJournal #bujo #PlainTextExperiment

From: @mikegrindle
https://indieweb.social/@mikegrindle/111886036108359427

I’ve started using the Plain Text Editor app by Sindre Sorhus, to display my weekly task plan.

What a beautifully simple #app this is! I love seeing the week ahead in a raw format that focuses me on the tasks, not on how pretty the #Markdown looks.

- Free
- Brain Dump mode (lets you type, but not delete)
- Word, character, and line count

The only feature I miss is a keyboard shortcut for shifting lines up and down. No big deal; I can always copy-paste.

#PlainTextExperiment #MacOS #Mac

@briandesmond I've been using #Obsidian for pretty much all my notes for over 3 years. I love it, but I'm strongly of the opinion that notes come first, and apps are just the interface we use to work with them.

I did a #PlainTextExperiment a while ago where I only used TextEdit on my #Mac to work with my notes, and a plain text reading app on #iOS. It was cool to focus on the content rather than what apps like Obsidian can do to enhance it!

#PlainTextExperiment day 3: today I continued using #iaWriter to manage my #pkm. I did no tweaking today at all, and just used IA Writer to take a bunch of notes as well as run through my daily processes, as well as doing a bunch of note refactoring. It's all remarkably easy in IA Writer. The only issue I had was that some of my notes were in the wrong folder, but I soon fixed that. It feels totally natural now, and I don't miss Obsidian at all (though I might go back to it yet...we'll see).

#PlainTextExperiment update 4:

It's going very well, I suppose, because today I forgot I was even doing it!

I can see myself using TextEdit for super focused writing from time to time. #iAWriter is much closer to #Obsidian, except for how much it struggles with previewing multiple file embeds on one page.

I'd love to know if there's a way to make links active in edit mode! And being able to preview wikilinks without leaving the current doc, would solve almost every iA frustration.

#PlainTextExperiment day 2: today I continued using #iaWriter to access my PKM. I discovered the joys of split view on the Mac, which works really well for my workflow.

I also updated the scripts I'd written for Obsidian and made them work anywhere. I can even call them using #LaunchBar so for example I can type "che" into LaunchBar and it runs my checklist manager. A few keystrokes and I'm ready to use a checklist. So far, this new setup has been brilliant and I don't miss Obsidian at all.

#PlainTextExperiment day 1: Inspired by @ellane, I'm trying to use my PKM without Obsidian. I'm using #iaWriter as my editor of choice...eventually I might switch to #vim but for now IA Writer is working well.

I got the "Insert Current Time" shortcut working for my time logging, and have setup the app to quickly access the key parts of my PKM. I still need to figure out how to handle checklists and my daily templates, but so far I'm loving the simplicity of this approach.

#PlainTextExperiment update 3:

I’ve *kind of* been cheating. I’m not using Obsidian to interact with my notes per se, but I am relying on it for my French language learning flashcards. The Spaced Repetition plugin is the one I’d miss the most, it seems!

If that plugin were to disappear, I could use folders to take its place: hard, good, easy, revising the difficult ones more often.

This is actually an awesome insight that I don’t think I’d have come up with without this experiment!

In this article I've written about how I track my #health in #obsidian using the Tracker plugin *but not relying on it*.

These are the kinds of simple digital workflows I love the best. Even this week, during my #PlainTextExperiment , I'm keeping up with it just fine. Pretty formatting is nice, but it's not essential!

Paid post on my blog: https://www.blog.plaintextpaperless.com/p/how-to-make-a-simple-health-log-in-obsidian

For Medium members: https://medium.com/@miscellaneplans/how-to-make-a-simple-health-log-in-obsidian-3e43cb0810c0

Free access, for everyone else: https://miscellaneplans.medium.com/how-to-make-a-simple-health-log-in-obsidian-3e43cb0810c0?sk=53e1cfd37813f562938be9c56c950ec6

#ObsidianMD

#PlainTextExperiment, update 2:

So far I miss wikilinks, the file tree on the left, and formatting via keyboard shortcuts. A *lot*.

I've divided the documents I'm working on into three windows, using Rectangle to size them to equal thirds. This is important because otherwise, text flows to the width of the window. If I want to focus on one window at a time, full screen, wrap to page is a good option.

#PlainTextExperiment update 1:

Scene: An #Obsidian user tests themself by using nothing but TextEdit to interact with their notes, for an entire day

After revelling in the simplicity of the app and how bare my notes look completely stripped of all formatting, the first thing I did was to go into TextEdit settings to try and make things more comfortable.
Can I change the margins? Text size?

—Seriously?? Time to stop scouring Apple forums for TextEdit hacks and just *get to work*!

Edit: tag