You only need to know two snippets to write a novel and perhaps go on to win the Nobel Price Literature. (p and h) All the others in the snippets list are optional, meant for webwriting where you want to be able to add all extras normally seen in a blog page or website. ( links, images, quotes, emphasis, lists, etc..)
In this post I will demonstrate that two snippets is really enough! Enough for writing text, not enough if you want "rich text". But here the question rises, does "rich" text make the other one "poor" text? I can already hear the classic writers roaring back to life to sharpen their pens, preparing to write a historical defence of their beloved art form. To them a text was rich if it conveyed rich thoughts and feelings.
In our 'modern' world, we are bombarded with all sorts of digital media, to the extend that more and more people are, consciously or not, choosing not to be exposed to it on a continuous basis. It is refreshing to see some authors and developers using "poor text" or "almost poor text" on purpose. I'm thinking of Manuel Moreale (https://manuelmoreale.com/), Sylvain Kerkour (https://kerkour.com/) and Herman (https://herman.bearblog.dev/ ( See how I keep my promises: only two snippets, so live links excluded..as a reward for your patience, I'll add links to these three authors at the end of this post.)
What started me writing this article, was a remark someone made about Olla 2.0. Basically saying that it's nice , but not beginner friendly enough. I was a little shocked, as in my opinion it was a great present for beginners. But then I started remembering my own 'beginner's years'...it took me years to get used to html and get over my wysiwyg addiction. Back in the days when Wordpress was still a startup, they coined the (beautiful) phrase "Code is poetry". As a poetry lover, I could not agree less! But to get back on topic, yes I can see now that for complete beginners, the hurdles are probably still too high. Maybe a step-by-step guide would be the answer. I'm thinking about it. Any ideas and suggestions are very much welcome!