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.