Benefit of using TXT to record, and preferred free TXT editor

It is worthwhile to record important things when happening, as a learning experience, e.g., how to solve a software problem. Such experience may have cost you a lot of time to find a solution, and the solution may be complex. After a while, it is hard to remember the details.

There were certain softwares which can help you record experiences or past happenings. However, I do not recommend you rely on any (complex) software to do so. The reason is simple: the format may become obsolete, the software may not be compatible with the newer OS, you may change your OS, or you do not want to pay for the software.

A TXT file is a simple solution, with careful planning of directory structure regarding where to place individual TXTs. TXT will never obsolete and can be easily opened by free softwares, under various OSs. Here we face two challenges:
1) Good directory structure so that you can easily locate what you are looking for;
2) Good naming convention of TXT file so that you can find it in a directory.

I do not recommend relying on the Desktop search engine (e.g., Google Desktop) to locate your files. It takes time to find out which file is the file you are really looking for.

Back to the directory structure and naming convention of TXT files, I have to say the best strategy is the one suits you most. Some simple guidelines are:

1) Top level directories shall cover very broad range (e.g., softwares), lower level ones cover narrower range (e.g., softwares_Windows, softwares_Linux), and so on;

2) There shall not be too many levels of directories, and not too few;

3) TXT names can use full names for description, with underscore or space between the words to make it readable; one may want to use acronyms to shorten the name, however, it takes time to translate the acronyms in your mind. If you insist to do so, please make sure to be able to understand the acronyms later by putting a separate file to explain the acronyms;

4) Data of events can be inserted into the TXT file names, e.g., 20100319_XXX_YYY.TXT. This can help sort the files according to the event dates. Creation date may be changed later if recovered from backup, and file may be modified in later days. So creation date or modification date shall not be used in sorting to locate the TXT according to the event's date.

At last, my preferred TXT editor is:
Notepad++.

It has multi-tab function, so that you can switch among several files quickly; it can also back up files before modifying it.

One problem I noticed that sometimes it may freeze (newer version may have solved this problem). You can just simply kill it and restart the software.

It was designed for programmers, and has many more functionalities than being simply used as a TXT editor.

Benefit of using TXT to record, and preferred free TXT editor