A while back I wrote about my desire to keep everything in one big text file. I kept to the system for a short while until the inherent limitations of notepad became an issue. Notepad served well for iterative journaling and noting down what I did during the day but using it for anything else was painful. What I wanted was a wiki. I started using Tiddlywiki again. I love Tiddlywiki and I was able to host a TW on Tiddlyhost. Nonetheless, I was still worried that one day I would come in to work and not be able to access Tiddlyhost because of the whims of the IT Security Gods and then where would I be? In addition, there was the additional problem that I have to work on multiple systems and I cannot transfer html files between systems like I can with plain text files.
I still wanted a plain text solution. I had Notepad and then there was Notepad++ which the IT immortals had deemed acceptable for mere mortal use. Notepad++ obviously has more features than Notepad but many of those extra features come through plugins and, you guessed it, the IT department has it locked to where I cannot install plugins. Back to square one. If I wanted to use Notepad++ as a plaintext wiki system it would have to be with the native features. Luckily, I was researching the topic for the 100th time and discovered that if you set the language to python you can use identations to fold the text. Actually, I already had tried this before but I couldn’t get it working. I was discussing the problem with a coworker who told me that for whatever reason Notepad++ sometimes could not tell when regular expressions began and ended or something to that effect. I started setting a bracket { before each section I want to fold and Notepad++ now knows to fold that section. Eureka! Now I can keep everything in text file. I have different sections for each topic and I add tags which makes finding everything much easier. Currently, I note down every site I visit and I tag the site if I want to return to it. I continue keeping my daily iterative work journal and I have added a wiki section with the topics arranged alphabetically. So far everything works well and I feel comfortable using it. So far I have not found a way to insert hyperlinks to sections within the document but I can live without that feature. I only use this system – if I haven’t already made it clear – at my job. At the house I use Obsidian.
I will continue to experiment with this set up and will post updates as needed.