Some plaintext tools and ideas
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Sat, 2006-09-23 23:43.
If you’re using a Unix-like operating system such as Mac OS X or Linux, you have at your disposal hundreds of individual and powerful tools designed to do sundry things to plain text files. Using command line pipes, you can instantly create your own complex programs created from these small utilities. GUI tools such as QuickSilver and GeekTool transform playing with plaintext into an even more powerful activity.
The many distractions of modern desktop computing begin to fade into the background, allowing what really matters to come into clear focus — Getting Things Done, to coin a phrase. ;) See Reducing Friction for more on this.
Allin Cottrell argues convincingly for text editors versus word processors in the mildly titled Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient. Just think to yourself whether you would rather process words or edit text?