September 18, 2024

HPR4208: 01 Plain Text Programs

7 minutes

01 Plain Text Programs

Hi. I'm here to talk about Plain Text Programs, what they are, what

they do, why they're good, and why they're not for everything. Right up

front I'm requesting feedback on what I have to say. I'm on Mastodon and

I'll start a thread for each podcast or you can reach me by email.

My Mastodon address is

@[email protected]

My profile is at

https://gamerplus.org/@hairylarry

And my email is

[email protected]

Also you can Network With Hairy Larry at

https://deltaboogie.net.

In the future I plan on doing podcasts on specific Plain Text

Programs, some that I wrote and some that were written by others. Any

program that I will discuss will be licensed with a free culture

license.

The first thing I want to emphasize about Plain Text Programs is that

there's no database like SQL or LLM. All text data is written in plain

text files stored on a file system.

Now, I love databases. Before I retired I was a database programmer.

And as a database programmer I learned a lot about the difficulties

maintaining programs that rely on databases. There's a lot of cool stuff

you can do with a database that's just not reasonable to try with plain

text. Now that I'm retired I don't really want to work that hard

anymore. I want programming to be easy and fun.

Plain text does not mean there can't be images or other media. Image

files like .jpg or .png can be stored in the file system just like text

files. No worries.

A big advantage of Plain Text Programs is portability. To back up a

working program you copy the directory tree that holds the program's

files. To install or restore a Plain Text Program copy the tree onto a

system or server.

I usually work on Linux using the PHP programming language. This is

of course my preference. Any language running on any file system can be

used to write Plain Text Programs.

My minimum install will usually have a configuration file, at least

one program file, and a set of text files.

Some of the Plain Text Programs I use all the time that I wrote

are

Websites

Dirt Simple Photo Gallery

Plain Text Blog

Not Actually Plain Text Blog

Network With Hairy Larry

Internet Radio

MixRemix - Creative Commons Jazz

KGPL

Utilities

Backup The Web Server

I also use Plain Text Programs that other programmers wrote

Music Folder Player

https://github.com/ltguillaume/music-folder-player

Free PHP File Directory Script

https://halgatewood.com/file-directory-list

Simple Image Browser

https://github.com/SammysHP/SimpleImageBrowser

Links to these programs are in the script.

So these are mostly websites or web applications but Plain Text

Programs do not have to be outward facing. They can just be an easy

program that you write to automate a task that you have to do

periodically. Like my Backup The Web Server program that I wrote in

bash.

I write my Plain Text Programs websites so that updates and additions

are made with FTP. FTP is a well established secure way to transfer

files from your development system to your web server. Another good

option, particularly for static websites that are generated on the

development system and then mirrored up to the server, is rsync.

I believe that simplicity is the key. I have written complicated

Plain Text Programs including the social network writing game, Collab.

But I think a simple one page or few pages design fits the plain text

paradigm better.

Well, I'm going to call this a wrap for now. I plan on covering

specific Plain Text Programs in future podcasts and I may occasionally

step back and look at the big picture or discuss ideas and

specifications for future projects.

Thanks for listening. I appreciate all your comments.

You can find the plain text script with the link to the comment

thread and all other links at home.gamerplus.org, a Not Actually Plain

Text Blog.

Comment thread link.

https://gamerplus.org/deck/@hairylarry/113142858145586294

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