Which file format for posts, comments and conversations?
Which file format for posts, comments and conversations?
I want to store my social media posts, comments and conversations in a standard format. They should be stored in simple, human-readable formats. I should be able to browse these files without specialised software.
I've been using Markdown for my websites and my recipes. I can open them as plain text, or use any of the dozens of Markdown viewers out there. Scripts can also work with those files without much effort. I find it preferable to databases and XML files.
I was wondering if there are common human-readable formats for chat logs, social media posts and social media comments.
So far, the best I can come up with is Markdown for social media content, and IRC chat logs for conversations. Is there anything better out there?
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If you’re talking about more long-term storage (that is, you want to be sure, in 5-10-20 years time, that you will easily be able to open and view these files), then I would strongly recommend you chose one of these formats that are widely use for archiving purposes:
Markdown is plain text; it just adds some formatting syntax. It is on your spreadsheet on row 347. You can read about it here.
Markdown is a plain text format that can render to HTML, but that is a lot easier to read and edit. It's widely known, used and supported. I run multiple websites that are Markdown files rendered into HTML templates. Most static site generators work that way.
PDF makes no sense here as we're talking about storing a few lines of text plus a few lines of metadata. It would make the files difficult to read on small screens, and very hard to read by machines.