It seems like the phrase "plain text is beautiful" is
peppered all over gopher space. It's like a digital bumper
sticker that you see all over town but perhaps don't quite
understand. At least, that's what it's like for me.
Yes, I love the command line. I love *nix, and I love DOS,
and I love retro. I miss my phosphorus green-screen wyse,
that I used to have plugged in on a serial port as a second
terminal. I enjoy a text interface. But, I've never thought
about the beauty of it, until gopher.
I'm still not entirely sold on the idea, so I figured I'd
ramble about it a bit.
Plain text is beautiful. I'm trying the phrase on. I love to
read; text on a page, an e-ink screen, or an LCD is pleasing
to me. Much of human knowledge is easily communicated with
words. Words are a great storage medium for thoughts. They
pile together to form stories and books and other sundry
things (like gopher holes.)
Text is beautiful. Maybe it doesn't have to be plain. What
more is there? Typesetting, illustrations, pictures, photos,
paintings, plates, hand-painted lithographs. I suppose there
are other things that combine well with text.
Words are beautiful. Maybe text is too limiting. Maybe we
worship the medium instead of the meaning, I don't know.
Perhaps it's the words themselves that are beautiful, and
plain text just stays out of the way.
Thinking of the inverse- are pictures hideous? Are photos
ugly? Is typesetting unsettling? I don't think that's true.
Are graphics unpleasant? Pictographs, glyphs; what about
non-roman characters?
Perhaps I'm overthinking this whole thing- maybe "plain text
is beautiful" is a reference to gopher vs. html. Maybe a
more complete phrase would be "plain text is more beautiful
than HTML/CSS/JS." Maybe it's just about the bloat and the
abuses and the lack of skill that the internet is fraught
with?
Of course, gopherspace isn't without problems. Not all of
the plain text is handsomely set forth (including mine.) Not
everything makes sense. The beauty is a choice made by the
beholder it seems, even with plain text.
Plain text is beautiful. I think I agree. I think I can say
it, put it on my bumper.
