7 ms·

Urtext: The Python plaintext library for people who've tried everything else

101 points by nbeversluis 1y ago

nbeversluis 1y ago
Urtext /ˈʊrtekst/ is an open-source library for plaintext writing, research, documentation, knowledge bases, journaling, Zettelkasten, project/personal organization, note taking, a lightweight database substitute, or any other writing or information management that can be done in text format. With some Python knowledge you can practically run your entire life from Urtext.
pvonmalt 1y ago
I’ve been using urtext as a “Second Brain” for several years now and love it. Miles beyond any other personal knowledge and notes system. Simply the ability to place, edit, and sort by timestamps sets it apart from other notes/knowledge systems. Requires some familiarity with Sublime Text and ST’s quirks, and eventually an ST license is basically a necessity.
- bomewish 1y ago
  Odd they don’t use the sublime package system, given that it is a sublime plugin. Can’t figure that one out.
  - nbeversluis 1y ago
    We have had trouble with package control, unfortunately. The package control bot was down for over two months without any notification to developers, and we did not know why the small pool of test users were unable to pull updates during this time. As a result, the package at https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext is now an installer only. See the readme at https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer. It installs another package control channel and pulls the latest from there. Obviously this is not ideal. We tried to solve it with Package Control maintainers to no avail. If you have time to test and give feedback on any problems, it is always appreciated.
- junipertea 1y ago
  Can you elaborate on how you use it? I tried googling any mention of it and failed (all reddit posts were deleted). I installed it into sublime but it didn't seem to do anything
lynx97 1y ago
Just took a very quick look... Am I right that this plaintext system requires a GUI editor to be used at all? No Emacs/VIM support?
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  Correct that it needs an editor, but it need not be GUI. Everything can be done in text buffers only. The library is newly presented and there is not an implementation in VIM, but it would be a good choice and would not take long to implement. I will make a note that there is interest.
  - digdugdirk 1y ago
    100%. This seems like something the Neovim crowd would get behind. They can be a helpful bunch too - it might be worth just starting a branch and asking for contribution assistance.
    - nbeversluis 1y ago
      This was great feedback, thank you. One of us in the development group is looking at NeoVim now as another possible implementation.
_ZeD_ 1y ago
Isn't this like leo[0]? -- https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/ https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  Yes, similar, and Leo was one of many inspirations.
deknos 1y ago
i just wish, somebody would ratify something like asciidoc+zim-wiki as a document format .. and include proper citing (like in emails). Than all this code+program+data could be decoupled.
- smaudet 1y ago
  I use zim/markdown too, asciidoc is nice(r). That's my main objection to this urtext thing - it's yet another text format, i.e., not really plaintext. I'm sure you could use it to run your life, but should you, probably not. Better to stick with more standard formats. You can even script those with Python, too...
wangii 1y ago
could anyone give one sentence pitch why it's better than markdown files?
- shakna 1y ago
  It's not quite in the same realm of use. The urtext files are more aware of other files, but they're also self-modifying. Sort of like comparing plain HTML to PHP. Appear in similar places, with completely different guarantees.
codethief 1y ago
Took me a while to understand what this is about – the website calls it a "library" but shows a GUI(?!) As far as I understand it is: - a plaintext file format (.urtext), - a Python library to parse & manipulate said file format, - a SublimeText plugin, - a GUI for visualization.
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  The documentation should be made clearer in that case. A priority was to make setup and trial easy for non-technical users. It seems now that to technical users it is unclear what is offered. From your list it is first and mostly: 1. a plaintext file format (.urtext) - specifically, a syntax 2. a Python library to parse & manipulate said file format (syntax) These in turn require some implementation within an editor. Sublime Text was chosen for its built-in Python interpreter, its package install system, and its GUI features that together comprise a low barrier to entry. Thanks for the feedback, we will try to make this clearer.
  - nathan_compton 1y ago
    Seems like a very concise pitch would be "org-mode for Sublime" and that would explain it adequately for most emacs users.
    - cbarrick 1y ago
      It would also explain it for non-emacs users. I am not and never have been an emacs user, yet I still know of org-mode.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        I've heard of it many times, but have basically no conception of what it actually is.
        codethief 1y ago
        It's a file format / markup language (think Markdown but more feature-rich) with excellent editor support in Emacs.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
alpaca128 1y ago
What makes this so special for people who've tried everything else?
skeledrew 1y ago
This sounds like an editor for org-mode with native Python block execution support. Is it?
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  Yes, inspired by org-mode and similar to it in some respects. It does have Python block execution, but the syntax is not that of org-mode.
kookamamie 1y ago
> The Python plaintext library Then, goes on to present a convoluted node-based system for managing content. Why call it "plaintext" when it clearly has nothing to do with it? Perhaps describing it as some kind of a Markdown alternative, i.e. a markup-language would make more sense?
- MitPitt 1y ago
  markdown and markup languages are plaintext
  - Retr0id 1y ago
    By that logic, aren't almost all languages plaintext?
    - bmn__ 1y ago
      Yes, this is nonsensical or contradictory because GP is not aware of the correct definition. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28105868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28105868
      - betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > Plain text: text without mark-up What is the utility of such a definition? As far as I am concerned, anything I can read with my editor is plain text. That definition is trivially useful on a daily basis. I don't see any point in calling markdown something other than plain text. Because it's just plain text. And of course, I intend deep disrespect that you had the gall to claim correctness for such obviously arbitrary definitions.
        pixl97 1y ago
        Yep, I call it the notepad/nano rule. If I can open your file in a notepad and effectively edit it without the format changing or getting corrupted at saving its plain text. Not plain text: Attempting to edit an .exe file in notepad. Unfriendly plain text: Minimized javascript where the entire file exists on one line and the human readable elements jumbled together. Plain text: Your average source code file/html file that attempts to adhere to something around 80-120 columns of text.
kseistrup 1y ago
When I follow the instructions on https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ (did it several times with a clean slate each time) there is always only "Urtext" available for package install, never "UrtextSublime". This is on Linux with Sublime 4 (and 2, didn't try v3).
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  Thank you for the feedback, very helpful. We are trying to solve this to make something close to a single-step install. The package at https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext is now an installer only. See the readme at https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer for information. It installs another package control channel and pulls the latest from there. Obviously this is not ideal, but it is the best we can do at the moment, unless you want to use Git and do it manually. Glad to hear any problems you run into.
  - kseistrup 1y ago
    Thank you for the links. I think I'm too dumb for this. I have only installed Sublime Text 4 because of Urtext, and I have no prior experience with the editor. At all. It is unclear to me what I should do with the `sublime_urtext_installer.py` file, so I jumped to the “run these steps manually” steps instead. This seems to be exactly what I did before with no luck, and this time is no different. Having followed the steps, the last step always only offer me to install “Urtext”, not “UrtextSublime” and if I do that there will be zero entries with “Urtext“ in the command palette afterwards. I will be happy to try the `sublime_urtext_installer.py` road, but I simply don't know what to do with that file. Cheers.
    - nbeversluis 1y ago
      If you have the patience to try again, we are eliminating any package control channel from the process, it is now a .ZIP file download. See if these steps are any more successful: https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/
briffid 1y ago
The website frustratingly assumes 4K display?
- bmn__ 1y ago
  What gives you the idea? Works fine in width 422px.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    looks like quite bad / incoherent for me personally. For something that is competing in a "make your information easy to handle, read, and manage" market, it takes too much effort to try figure out where the creators want me to look, or where valuable information exists. This doesn't leave one feeling confident on what is being offered. For example I load in to a massive animation that flicks around at a fast pace. So the first impression is "fuck you, you don't need to know what is going on" I then scroll down to try find something to read/look at that makes sense. I am met with two bits of information "just download it to get started" and "it's a plain text editor that does stuff many tools you already have do" So far, things aren't great. Lets look at the demo project, maybe that has some screenshots that really highight it's potential. "Download the software and just import the demo project" So, over all, the impression one is left me with is a "just trust me bro, please bro, it's really useful bro, just install it, I swear" kind of message. Personally, I am not just unconvinced by actively wary of this project.
wizzard0 1y ago
this is all very cool, but what it does sorely miss is usage examples. it must be obvious for its creators, but presents quite a wall of features for others to join in.
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  There is a "starter project" with self-documenting examples that can be created from the Sublime Text command palette: https://urtext.co/setup/starter-project/ https://urtext.co/setup/starter-project/ We can make some more example projects available, will do it shortly. Thanks for the suggestion.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    i'd like to see examples before i install something.
    - nbeversluis 1y ago
      This was helpful, thank you. We replaced the video on the homepage with some inline examples of at least syntax, and will soon post some examples of "real world" use. Curious, how important would it be to you that the examples be readable with syntax highlighting and full tabbing/formatting in the browser? It is somewhat complicated to accomplish this and; present examples are mostly using manual inline styling. Would examples projects on Github be helpful? It presents the same problem for syntax highlighting.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        i think having examples at all is much more important than worrying about syntax highlighting. example projects on github or anywhere else would also be great. the format would probably even lend itself to use the explanations as your example text.
WillAdams 1y ago
Why a special format? Why not a directory tree of plain text files? One tool which did this is Tombo: https://openhub.net/p/p_7697 https://openhub.net/p/p_7697 (unfortunately, the actual page for this is down --- did it make it to Github?)
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  Why not markdown? What does urtext bring to the table markdown doesn't?
  - coldtea 1y ago
    All the things shown in the intro page
    - DocTomoe 1y ago
      My question was honest: What urtext - to someone who moved from org-mode to Obsidian - seems to do is * chain you to a proprietary text editor that does some python interpreting. I wonder which use cases would want me to have my document change itself (or even change its own changing logic). * highlights 'features' that really do not live in the document itself but rather in the editor's logic (like timestamp handling) * introduces a complex structure to express 'nodes', which appear to be essentially text anchors. But anything else, the editing, the easy-UI-free syntax, markdown has done ten years ago. So it is not a text format, because it lives in a very specific editor. It is not a fully-fledged software package either. It sounds a lot like some sort of macro language which woke up one day and decided to rather be a text repository. If you (speaking of a general you, not you specifically) wanted to convince people to make the switch, a list of barely described features is insufficient. You need to sell a solution, not a product.
    - Grimblewald 1y ago
      Your answer contributes nothing, which is just shy of what the intro pages offers in relation the question. Everything urtext claims, is readily achievable through markdown + some collection of tools of your choice, for which many exist, some being all in one solutions. Obsidian with a few community plugins is a clear example. I enjoy and appreciate projects like this, I _WANT_ to like and understand it, but as it stands the information simply isn't there.
techlatest_net 1y ago
[dead]

101 points by nbeversluis 1y ago

Urtext /ˈʊrtekst/ is an open-source library for plaintext writing, research, documentation, knowledge bases, journaling, Zettelkasten, project/personal organization, note taking, a lightweight database substitute, or any other writing or information management that can be done in text format. With some Python knowledge you can practically run your entire life from Urtext.

pvonmalt 1y ago

I’ve been using urtext as a “Second Brain” for several years now and love it. Miles beyond any other personal knowledge and notes system. Simply the ability to place, edit, and sort by timestamps sets it apart from other notes/knowledge systems. Requires some familiarity with Sublime Text and ST’s quirks, and eventually an ST license is basically a necessity.

bomewish 1y ago
Odd they don’t use the sublime package system, given that it is a sublime plugin. Can’t figure that one out.
- nbeversluis 1y ago
  We have had trouble with package control, unfortunately. The package control bot was down for over two months without any notification to developers, and we did not know why the small pool of test users were unable to pull updates during this time. As a result, the package at https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext is now an installer only. See the readme at https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer. It installs another package control channel and pulls the latest from there. Obviously this is not ideal. We tried to solve it with Package Control maintainers to no avail. If you have time to test and give feedback on any problems, it is always appreciated.
junipertea 1y ago
Can you elaborate on how you use it? I tried googling any mention of it and failed (all reddit posts were deleted). I installed it into sublime but it didn't seem to do anything

lynx97 1y ago

Just took a very quick look... Am I right that this plaintext system requires a GUI editor to be used at all? No Emacs/VIM support?

nbeversluis 1y ago
Correct that it needs an editor, but it need not be GUI. Everything can be done in text buffers only. The library is newly presented and there is not an implementation in VIM, but it would be a good choice and would not take long to implement. I will make a note that there is interest.
- digdugdirk 1y ago
  100%. This seems like something the Neovim crowd would get behind. They can be a helpful bunch too - it might be worth just starting a branch and asking for contribution assistance.
  - nbeversluis 1y ago
    This was great feedback, thank you. One of us in the development group is looking at NeoVim now as another possible implementation.

_ZeD_ 1y ago

Isn't this like leo[0]? -- https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/ https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/

nbeversluis 1y ago
Yes, similar, and Leo was one of many inspirations.

deknos 1y ago

i just wish, somebody would ratify something like asciidoc+zim-wiki as a document format .. and include proper citing (like in emails). Than all this code+program+data could be decoupled.

smaudet 1y ago
I use zim/markdown too, asciidoc is nice(r). That's my main objection to this urtext thing - it's yet another text format, i.e., not really plaintext. I'm sure you could use it to run your life, but should you, probably not. Better to stick with more standard formats. You can even script those with Python, too...

wangii 1y ago

could anyone give one sentence pitch why it's better than markdown files?

shakna 1y ago
It's not quite in the same realm of use. The urtext files are more aware of other files, but they're also self-modifying. Sort of like comparing plain HTML to PHP. Appear in similar places, with completely different guarantees.

codethief 1y ago

Took me a while to understand what this is about – the website calls it a "library" but shows a GUI(?!) As far as I understand it is: - a plaintext file format (.urtext), - a Python library to parse & manipulate said file format, - a SublimeText plugin, - a GUI for visualization.

nbeversluis 1y ago
The documentation should be made clearer in that case. A priority was to make setup and trial easy for non-technical users. It seems now that to technical users it is unclear what is offered. From your list it is first and mostly: 1. a plaintext file format (.urtext) - specifically, a syntax 2. a Python library to parse & manipulate said file format (syntax) These in turn require some implementation within an editor. Sublime Text was chosen for its built-in Python interpreter, its package install system, and its GUI features that together comprise a low barrier to entry. Thanks for the feedback, we will try to make this clearer.
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  Seems like a very concise pitch would be "org-mode for Sublime" and that would explain it adequately for most emacs users.
  - cbarrick 1y ago
    It would also explain it for non-emacs users. I am not and never have been an emacs user, yet I still know of org-mode.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      I've heard of it many times, but have basically no conception of what it actually is.
      - codethief 1y ago
        It's a file format / markup language (think Markdown but more feature-rich) with excellent editor support in Emacs.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

alpaca128 1y ago

What makes this so special for people who've tried everything else?

skeledrew 1y ago

This sounds like an editor for org-mode with native Python block execution support. Is it?

nbeversluis 1y ago
Yes, inspired by org-mode and similar to it in some respects. It does have Python block execution, but the syntax is not that of org-mode.

kookamamie 1y ago

> The Python plaintext library Then, goes on to present a convoluted node-based system for managing content. Why call it "plaintext" when it clearly has nothing to do with it? Perhaps describing it as some kind of a Markdown alternative, i.e. a markup-language would make more sense?

MitPitt 1y ago
markdown and markup languages are plaintext
- Retr0id 1y ago
  By that logic, aren't almost all languages plaintext?
  - bmn__ 1y ago
    Yes, this is nonsensical or contradictory because GP is not aware of the correct definition. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28105868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28105868
    - betterThanTexas 1y ago
      > Plain text: text without mark-up What is the utility of such a definition? As far as I am concerned, anything I can read with my editor is plain text. That definition is trivially useful on a daily basis. I don't see any point in calling markdown something other than plain text. Because it's just plain text. And of course, I intend deep disrespect that you had the gall to claim correctness for such obviously arbitrary definitions.
      - pixl97 1y ago
        Yep, I call it the notepad/nano rule. If I can open your file in a notepad and effectively edit it without the format changing or getting corrupted at saving its plain text. Not plain text: Attempting to edit an .exe file in notepad. Unfriendly plain text: Minimized javascript where the entire file exists on one line and the human readable elements jumbled together. Plain text: Your average source code file/html file that attempts to adhere to something around 80-120 columns of text.

kseistrup 1y ago

When I follow the instructions on https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ (did it several times with a clean slate each time) there is always only "Urtext" available for package install, never "UrtextSublime". This is on Linux with Sublime 4 (and 2, didn't try v3).

nbeversluis 1y ago
Thank you for the feedback, very helpful. We are trying to solve this to make something close to a single-step install. The package at https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext https://packagecontrol.io/search/urtext is now an installer only. See the readme at https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer https://github.com/nbeversl/urtext_sublime_installer for information. It installs another package control channel and pulls the latest from there. Obviously this is not ideal, but it is the best we can do at the moment, unless you want to use Git and do it manually. Glad to hear any problems you run into.
- kseistrup 1y ago
  Thank you for the links. I think I'm too dumb for this. I have only installed Sublime Text 4 because of Urtext, and I have no prior experience with the editor. At all. It is unclear to me what I should do with the `sublime_urtext_installer.py` file, so I jumped to the “run these steps manually” steps instead. This seems to be exactly what I did before with no luck, and this time is no different. Having followed the steps, the last step always only offer me to install “Urtext”, not “UrtextSublime” and if I do that there will be zero entries with “Urtext“ in the command palette afterwards. I will be happy to try the `sublime_urtext_installer.py` road, but I simply don't know what to do with that file. Cheers.
  - nbeversluis 1y ago
    If you have the patience to try again, we are eliminating any package control channel from the process, it is now a .ZIP file download. See if these steps are any more successful: https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/ https://urtext.co/setup/sublime-text/

briffid 1y ago

The website frustratingly assumes 4K display?

bmn__ 1y ago
What gives you the idea? Works fine in width 422px.
- Grimblewald 1y ago
  looks like quite bad / incoherent for me personally. For something that is competing in a "make your information easy to handle, read, and manage" market, it takes too much effort to try figure out where the creators want me to look, or where valuable information exists. This doesn't leave one feeling confident on what is being offered. For example I load in to a massive animation that flicks around at a fast pace. So the first impression is "fuck you, you don't need to know what is going on" I then scroll down to try find something to read/look at that makes sense. I am met with two bits of information "just download it to get started" and "it's a plain text editor that does stuff many tools you already have do" So far, things aren't great. Lets look at the demo project, maybe that has some screenshots that really highight it's potential. "Download the software and just import the demo project" So, over all, the impression one is left me with is a "just trust me bro, please bro, it's really useful bro, just install it, I swear" kind of message. Personally, I am not just unconvinced by actively wary of this project.

wizzard0 1y ago

this is all very cool, but what it does sorely miss is usage examples. it must be obvious for its creators, but presents quite a wall of features for others to join in.

nbeversluis 1y ago
There is a "starter project" with self-documenting examples that can be created from the Sublime Text command palette: https://urtext.co/setup/starter-project/ https://urtext.co/setup/starter-project/ We can make some more example projects available, will do it shortly. Thanks for the suggestion.
- em-bee 1y ago
  i'd like to see examples before i install something.
  - nbeversluis 1y ago
    This was helpful, thank you. We replaced the video on the homepage with some inline examples of at least syntax, and will soon post some examples of "real world" use. Curious, how important would it be to you that the examples be readable with syntax highlighting and full tabbing/formatting in the browser? It is somewhat complicated to accomplish this and; present examples are mostly using manual inline styling. Would examples projects on Github be helpful? It presents the same problem for syntax highlighting.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      i think having examples at all is much more important than worrying about syntax highlighting. example projects on github or anywhere else would also be great. the format would probably even lend itself to use the explanations as your example text.

WillAdams 1y ago

Why a special format? Why not a directory tree of plain text files? One tool which did this is Tombo: https://openhub.net/p/p_7697 https://openhub.net/p/p_7697 (unfortunately, the actual page for this is down --- did it make it to Github?)

DocTomoe 1y ago
Why not markdown? What does urtext bring to the table markdown doesn't?
- coldtea 1y ago
  All the things shown in the intro page
  - DocTomoe 1y ago
    My question was honest: What urtext - to someone who moved from org-mode to Obsidian - seems to do is * chain you to a proprietary text editor that does some python interpreting. I wonder which use cases would want me to have my document change itself (or even change its own changing logic). * highlights 'features' that really do not live in the document itself but rather in the editor's logic (like timestamp handling) * introduces a complex structure to express 'nodes', which appear to be essentially text anchors. But anything else, the editing, the easy-UI-free syntax, markdown has done ten years ago. So it is not a text format, because it lives in a very specific editor. It is not a fully-fledged software package either. It sounds a lot like some sort of macro language which woke up one day and decided to rather be a text repository. If you (speaking of a general you, not you specifically) wanted to convince people to make the switch, a list of barely described features is insufficient. You need to sell a solution, not a product.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    Your answer contributes nothing, which is just shy of what the intro pages offers in relation the question. Everything urtext claims, is readily achievable through markdown + some collection of tools of your choice, for which many exist, some being all in one solutions. Obsidian with a few community plugins is a clear example. I enjoy and appreciate projects like this, I _WANT_ to like and understand it, but as it stands the information simply isn't there.

techlatest_net 1y ago

[dead]