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I'm experimenting with a single 500K+ line-long flat text file for EVERYTHING, from dream journalling to work email drafts to blog posts etc. -- I've even copied math from my home whiteboard in latex -- screw rendering, I'll transcribe them back when I need them.

At one point I was trying to do a Luhmann's Zettelkasten with one note per txt file, internal linking, etc. I concatenated every piece of txt content I had. It's much simpler.

I have no system anymore. I try to create internal "hashtags" that are ctrl-F searchable. The goal is having something that's always open and at hand. I got plugins for autosaving when the window loses focus, autoloading when changed in disk and it syncs to Dropbox.

I cobbled together in Notepad++ (which has a GUI for this) a small syntax coloring definition that sort of matches my spontaneous habits from old salvaged text. I intend to let this evolve too. E.g. I'm using {braces} to have a little collapse button that hides pieces of text.



I came to the same conclusion: a massive flat text file in emacs. I was using orgmode for a bit, but it was too convoluted. I have a very simple markup to identify TODO items with [ ], and I nest contiguous items with { }, making it easy to navigate chunks with emacs. I then have 3 keyboard macros to mark/unmark and move the TODO items into a DONE section. It's simple enough I can recreate the system from scratch in a few minutes when I'm at a new terminal.


I use the same method for years: big single .txt file, with hashtags that are CTRL+F searchable, exactly the same!

Among all the organization/notetaking methods I've tried, this is really the best. No fancy app in the browser, but really effective and fast.

I've written a small article about it here:

https://illdoitlater.xyz/t/plaintext


> Cons: no sync with a mobile device

How do you access your notes on your phone? How do you edit?


What about using syncthing? There are decent text editors for mobile.




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