I want to keep a digital journal on my computer. I keep a physical journal in notebooks and on pieces of sheets, but I now want to back up my journal on the computer and if needed maintain the journal on the computer.
I know of many different journaling apps. *I have tried Evernote and OneNote (my favourite of the two). But being an aspiring programmer, I have a great respect for text files. I know that text files are practically universally readable. If Evernote or OneNote is to become obsolete, I may never be able to recover my journal entries, because they are locked into the proprietory file formats in which Evernote and OneNote formats its data. I don't want to have my data locked into these file formats.
I want to keep my entries in plain-text files, marking up my file using restructured text markup.
My question is, how should I keep my files for the best organization and for later compilation? Should I keep my journal entries in one large file? Or should I keep my journal entries in separate files?
Example:
journal.txt <-- contains all entries
or
2013-10-06.txt
2013-10-07.txt
2013-10-08.txt
What do you think is the best way to organize journal entries in plain-text files?
(Keep in mind that I may later want to compile the entries into a book, using pandoc. Balance between the conveniences for now and later).
* -- If I had a Mac I would have settled for DayOne on any day, and would have bought it for any price; it's beautiful.