That's exactly when I created MusicSync (obsidian for music) I relied on keeping absolute minimal state in the app.
All the file organization and maintenance happens in the user's Google Drive and the phone's SD card.
https://ashishb.net/all/why-i-built-an-alternative-to-google...
Great project Ashish!
This is exactly why I like to document my APIs using Bruno [1] instead of Postman or Insomnia.
Bruno creates plain-text files that I can easily read with any text editor; and as an additional bonus, I can version my files using Git.
Noticed that good old Visual Studio and some OSS tools supports .http files of the IntelliJ format so hopefully we can converge on them because the format is quite plain and obvious and doesn't contain too many surprises.
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-syntax.ht...
This is very good. I shall update it on the list!
Text files are amazing for longevity - however, they are obviously limited in the type of data they can contain (text).
Personally I create a lot of visual data such as images, drawings and video, as well as audio. I try to have everything accessible in the most rudimentary lossless format, but in this domain there are so many tradeoffs. It would be interesting to read (or perhaps write) a similar post for this sort of data.
I had the same thought will writing this. I do not have an answer other than plain text.
But in terms of preservation and archiving, I'm thinking of storing the files in binary as a backup.
I have been swinging around to the opinion that SQLite + files is perhaps the universal data format after all. Files give you efficient blob storage, and the SQLite database can in fact encode most types of constraints and structure.
Text files are amazing, and for when you need to structure data you can use sqlite.
I am using it for https://loadjitsu.io/ Still looking for a good solution to seamlessly sync local sqlite to cloud for backup when the user wants
Isn't this "philosphy" just a rehash of Open File Formats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_file_formats
Albeit, limited to just plain text formats.
Hi Author here!
I think when I scribbled this thought, the idea was more on formats that MIGHT endure the test of time. Yes, copyright free matters a lot. But I'm very skeptical of say formats like WebP. Will it last for decades, I don't know!
File over online app. I'm all for it.
But I'm not concerned about the ability to read this or that obscure file format in three decades: just look at the retro community accessing files in old formats for the C64 or whatever old machine.
In a way we know have "app as file": be it a container build file or a complete VM, we can emulate pretty much anything and everything as long as it doesn't depend on something online.
Any app, on any OS, as long as it doesn't require a proprietary online server, can be emulated or virtualized.
I can run the old DOS programs I wrote back in 1990 or so, decoding weird picture file formats. I've got an emulator running on a Pi hooked to an adapter in my vintage arcade cab emulating thousands of arcade games.
If anything it is easier to access all those old apps and file formats today then back in the days, because you can manipulate them from a much more powerful system.
Rant done, off to Proxmox to create a container installing QEMU to emulate a Raspberry Pi 2 (it's more convenient to test in an emulator and then deploy later on on the real thing).