思考与写作graydon2.dreamwidth.org编辑精选
永远押注文本（2014）
Always Bet on Text (2014)
2014 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Graydon Hoare（Rust 语言作者）2014 年的博文，主张文本是人类有史以来最强大、最有用、最有效的沟通技术：它可搜索、可压缩、可复制、可版本控制、可被命令行工具和屏幕阅读器处理。文章逐一比较文本与其他媒介的优劣，论证在可预见的未来仍应押注文本。
为什么经久不衰：它切中了数字时代文本与多媒体之争的核心，文中列举的文本优势（可搜索、可 diff、可复制）今天依然成立，评论区又补充了图形表达与无障碍等反面视角。
HN 评论精选
文本的优势可能只是“更易数字化、更易复制”的技术红利，而非媒介本身更优越。
问题是：这些优势究竟源于文本是更好的沟通媒介，还是源于我们技术的局限？在电脑上打一个字和画一幅画对比：几乎每个用电脑的人都会打字，但我敢打赌不到 10% 的人能画出一个圆；可把一张纸放在人面前，几乎每个人都能画圆。这说明局限在于处理其他媒介的技术，而不是沟通媒介本身的效果。换句话说，文本被感知到的大部分优势，其实是文本更容易数字化表征（或更容易复制，比如印刷机）的优势。
robenkleene查看英文原文
The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology? Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle. But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle. This points to there being a limitation in the technology for working with other forms of media, not the effectiveness of the communication medium itself. This isn't to say that text isn't also a better communication medium, but it is to say, until the technology has improved for communicating with other media, it's difficult to compare without basing the decision on the limitations of the technology. In other words, most of the perceived advantages of text are really advantages of text being easier to represent digitally (or generally reproduced, e.g., printing press), not advantages of text as a communication medium itself.
文本在搜索、比较、工具集成、复制粘贴、无障碍方面有音视频无法比拟的操作性优势。
人阅读的速度远快于说话，还能谷歌生词。你可以对任意大的文本文件 Ctrl+F 搜索关键词，对两小时长的视频或 mp3 试试看——你得从头听到尾，这就是我对“教程都做成视频”这股新潮流感到恼火的原因。文本可以轻松 diff，可以配合版本控制系统，可以配合 Unix 命令行工具，可以轻松把相关片段粘贴到 wiki、邮件或 IM 讨论里；Google 翻译和屏幕阅读器都能处理文本。
ajuc查看英文原文
People can read much faster than they can speak, and they can google a new words. You can Ctrl+F arbitraly big text files for keywords. Good luck with doing the same with 2-hours-long video file or mp3. You will need to listen to the whole thing. That's what annoys me about the new trend to do tutorials as video. You can easily diff text. Text works with version control systems. Text works with unix command line tools. You can trivialy paste relevant fragments on wiki pages, in emails or IM discussions. Google translate works with text. Screen readers work with text.
有些信息（如 Minard 流量图）用视觉半分钟就能说清，纯文本会冗长得多。
我同意在这个媒体泛滥的时代文本被低估了；说这话的我尽可能用终端应用（邮件、推特、记账、编程等——我私下祈祷纯文本互联网能回归）。但另一方面，有些东西用图片传达是纯文本无法企及的。举个著名的例子：Minard 的图（拿破仑远征俄罗斯的流量图），只看一眼、半分钟左右，你就能大致理解涉及的数量、它们如何随时间演变、如何相互关联。用纯文本传达同样的信息会冗长得多。这里不展开——如果你不熟悉这些想法，去读 Edward Tufte 的书吧。
GuiA查看英文原文
I agree that text is undervalued in our current media happy era; I say this as someone who uses terminal applications as much as possible (email, twitter, accounting, programming, etc. - I secretly pray for a return of the text only internet) On the other hand, there are things that pictures can convey in ways that plain text couldn't approximate. To link to a famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minard.png Just looking at this, in half a minute or so, you get a pretty good idea of the quantities involved, how they evolved over time, how they are linked together, etc. Conveying the same information with pure text would be much more lengthy. I'm not going to make an entire case for this right here - just read Edward Tufte's books if you aren't too familiar with those ideas.
SVG 也是文本格式，反而印证了文本的高效；而 karma 激励文本转图片，导致内容无法复制粘贴。
文中说文本是最高效的沟通技术，快上几个数量级：这篇博文大概占 5000 字节，压缩后也许 2000；而下面这张 20 像素见方的推特小鸟剪影图要 4000 字节。我读到这的反应是：“是啊，但那是因为你把它编码成了 PNG。那只是‘够用’的编码，你完全可以用 SVG 做得更高效，因为这张图正适合矢量图形。”然后我想起来，SVG 本身就是基于文本的格式。Touché。再补一点：Reddit 等网站的 karma 系统激励人们把文本转成图片，因为文本帖拿不到 karma——比如 r/quotesporn 的用户和名言数远多于只允许文本的 r/quotes。作为一个名言收藏者，这让我无比恼火，因为我没法把名言复制粘贴到我的收藏里。
kerkeslager查看英文原文
> Text is the most efficient communication technology. By orders of magnitude. This blog post is likely to take perhaps 5000 bytes of storage, and could compress down to maybe 2000; by comparison the following 20-pixel-square image of the silhouette of a tweeting bird takes 4000 bytes: <Twitter Logo Here>. My reaction when reading this was, "Yeah, but that's because you encoded it in PNG. That's a 'good-enough' encoding, but you can definitely make it more efficient by making it an SVG, since that image is of the kind that's ideal for vector graphics." And then I remembered SVG is a text-based image format. Touché, frog hop. Touché. Adding to the point: karma system on sites such as Reddit has incentivized converting text into images, because text posts don't get karma. For example, r/quotesporn[1] (safe for work) has many more users and quotes than r/quotes[2] which allows only text. As a collector of quotes, this annoys me to no end, because I can't copy/paste the quotes into my personal quotes collection. [1] http://reddit.com/r/quotesporn (safe for work) [2] http://reddit.com/r/quotes
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