semioticrobotic.info

Bryan Behrenshausen's public notebook. Updated irregularly.

A plain text penchant

Scott Nesbitt, proprietor of the excellent and indispensable Plain Text Project, has published an interview with me. We discuss my writing and editing habits, my tool preferences, and my plain-by-default workflow.

I’m aware of no other place on the web that would grant me such room to explain my plain-text writing penchant in crushing detail. But I’m sure glad it exists. And I’m glad Scott’s running it.

On a related note: I suppose I should document here my current plain-text writing setup (since it’s changed since the interview and will inevitably change again).

I recently rehabilitated my beloved ThinkPad X220 and have installed Fedora 29 Workstation on it. It’s now my dedicated writing machine, and to that end I’ve customized it with the following software:

• i3 (for window management)
• nano (for general text editing)
• ghostwriter (for markdown text editing)
• wordgrinder (for all-purpose writing)
• aiksaurus (for lightweight reference)
• proselint (for editing help and inspiration)
• w3m (for reading remote files with minimal interruption)

No environment is “distraction-free” (have you seen my desk?), but this gets me as close as I could hope to be.

# December 5, 2018