Even though I put The Plain Text Project out to pasture in December, 2022, I still use plain text for most everything that I do. And I'm always stumbling across some new text-only tool or another.

One that I encountered at the end of 2022 is Noodle. It's billed as a collection of text-based thinking tools. I look at it more as an easy-to-use plain text workspace.

Curious? Let's take a look at it.

(Note: This post was first published, in a different form, at Opensource.com and appears here via a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.)

When you think of the word wiki, chances are the first thing that comes to mind is Wikipedia. That's not a surprise, considering that Wikipedia did help put the concept of the wiki into the popular consciousness.

Wikis, which are websites you can edit, are great tools for collaborating and organizing. But wikis usually require a lot of digital plumbing and a bit of care to use and maintain. All of that's overkill for personal use.

Enter TiddlyWiki, the brainchild of British software developer Jeremy Ruston. TiddlyWiki is very easy to use and is very portable.

Let's take a quick look at the basics of using TiddlyWiki.

(Note: This post was first published, in a slightly different form, at Opensource.com and appears here via a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.)

Let's take a trip back in time to the early, simpler days of the web. A time when most of us went online using low-powered PCs or dumb terminals, often over slow dial-up connections. Some of use visited web pages using command-line, text-only browsers like the venerable Lynx.

Jump forward to these days of web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and a few others. You'd think that browsing the web at the command line would have gone the way of the tag. You'd be wrong. Web browsers that run in a terminal window are alive and kicking. They're niche, but still get the job done.

Let's take a look at three browsers for the command line.

(Note: This post started life, in a different form, at Opensource.com and appears here via a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.)

In the early days of the web, a hundred browsers bloomed. Well, figuratively at least. Back then, there were more than a few of web browsers, but eventually that number was whittled down. Today, we're left with the Big Three and a (very) small handful of other web browsers.

Does the world need another web browser? I'm not the one to decide that. But some people think there is room for alternatives to Firefox, Chrome, and that other browser.

One of those alternatives is Min. As its name suggests (suggests to me, anyway), Min is a minimalist browser. That doesn't mean it's deficient in any significant way. Being open source, under an Apache 2.0 license, of course piques my interest in Min.

Let's take a look at Min and see what it can do.

(Note: This post was first published, in a slightly different form, at Opensource.com and appears here via a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.)

Even though I'm not their most enthusiastic user, I do realize that spreadsheets can be very useful. And they're not just tools for people working in finance or in data science. Anyone can use spreadsheet to keep track of their personal finances, to catalogue a personal library, and more.

Desktop spreadsheet editors have their limitations. The biggest is that you need to be at your computer to use one. On top of that, if you need to share a spreadsheet, it can quickly become a messy affair.

Enter EtherCalc, an open source, web-based spreadsheet. While not as fully featured as a desktop spreadsheet, EtherCalc packs enough features for most people.

Let's take a look at how to get started using it.

A calendar is more than just something that you use to mark off the days until the weekend. It's also a powerful tool for keeping organized and keeping track of your appointments and more. One of the apps built into Nextcloud is a calendar.

Nextcloud Calendar is easy to set up and use. It packs just enough features for most people. And, if your needs are fairly simple, it's a great alternative to the popular web-based calendar tools out there.

Let's take a closer look at Nextcloud Calendar.

While writers have the reputation of being solitary figures, tapping away at keyboards in small rooms, we sometimes have to collaborate with other writers. And sometimes we need to collaborate while an idea or document is hot.

Collaborating in real time can be tricky. You just can't email word processor files around and hope to quickly or efficiently work together.

A number of online tools make real-time collaboration easier and cheaper. I know a number of writers who have embraced those tools for working with other writers and with clients. But not every writer uses those tools, and not every writer wants to.

If you're in a situation like that, then you might want to consider an open source alternative: EtherPad.

If you were building web pages back in the 1990s, you might remember all of the dedicated HTML editors that were out there. If you were anything like me, you tried more than a couple of them.

Most of those editors have faded from memory, their bits and bytes dispersed ... well, wherever they've been dispersed to. One of the few that survived on the Linux desktop is Bluefish. And it survived for a good reason. Bluefish is a solid HTML editor that's actually more than an HTML editor.

Let's take a look at it.

A few months ago, I finally realized that too much of what I did was spread across a few too many services and applications. Jumping around to review things like my calendar and task list was a bit of a distraction. I figured there had to be a better way of doing that.

I didn't have to look far. Nextcloud came to my rescue. While I've been using Nextcloud for several years, it was only recently that started thinking about using it as a personal hub. Yeah, sometimes it takes me a while ...

The great thing about Nextcloud is that it's easy to set up as a hub, with many of the tools that you need to do what you need to do. So, let's take a quick peek at how to turn Nextcloud into a personal hub.

If you've been around the web for a while, you might recall the First Browser War. It was a digital arms race between Netscape and Microsoft to cram as many features into their web browsers as they could. And they did. The result of that war was buggy, bloated, ungainly software. I don't miss those days ...

Things aren't quite that bad in the web browser world today. But as this article points out, modern browsers still try to do too much. They try to be too much. Even though I use Firefox, I'm always on the lookout for a good minimal, open source web browser. And like the writer of that article, I've used, written about, and liked one called Min. But I also try to keep my options open.

Recently, I was reacquainted with Web, the browser that comes with the GNOME desktop. I remember Web when it was called Epiphany. Back then, it was a lightweight browser with more than a little promise. In those days, it wasn't quite where I thought it should be, though. Several years on, I decided to take another look at Web. Here's what I found.