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Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

markwhen.com

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Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#61

Post by philipwhiuk »

tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Be careful. Gruber (who has trademark in “Markdown”), appears to not like people using his trademark name. https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...

Joel tried to write an IETF Standard by the backdoor for a thing he didn't invent.

Having been kicked off the word standard, they immediately thought "how can we still do this while technically obeying it". So they picked the closest possible word to Standard, implying it really was the definitive version.

Yeah, I'd be grumpy too.

If he'd called it 'Atwood Flavoured Markdown' there wouldn't be an issue. But Joel wanted to own the definition of Markdown.

As a group of tech CEOs they decided to co-opt someone's idea without even asking if it was okay.

In fact kicking John off the project was the point.

You can do that, you just can't keep the name they created.

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#62

Post by ta1243 »

AlanYx wrote: post #54
accrual wrote: post #14

This is neat! It reminded me of this project by cheeaun that enables one to create a visual timeline based on a simple texted based format. The purpose was to plot one's life events in a visual way. https://github.com/cheeaun/life Sample file (from the repository): @USERNAME's life =============== - 24/02/1955 Born - ~1968 Summer job - 03/1976 Built a computer - 01/04/1976 Started a company - 04/1976-2011 Whole bunch…

That is a great project! I wonder if anyone has created a visualization that uses a "life in weeks" format (like https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html ) rather than a linear horizontal timeline.

What a depressing site!

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#63

Post by thunfisch »

dimava wrote: post #60
dustedcodes wrote: post #58

Things like Markdown work because they are intuitive, but the date range syntax in Markwhen is anything but intuitive. Why 2025-01-22 / 2026-10-24? Why not 2025/01/22 - 2026/10/24?

Because this is ISO 8601 date format, the standard date format that intentionally uses dashes to not confuse 25/01/22, 01/22/25 and 22/01/26 which are the same date in different formats (that's why it uses dashes for dates, as for why it uses / for interval I have no idea)

It's using a slash because that's how ISO 8601 defines time intervals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_intervals

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#65

Post by dustedcodes »

dimava wrote: post #60
dustedcodes wrote: post #58

Things like Markdown work because they are intuitive, but the date range syntax in Markwhen is anything but intuitive. Why 2025-01-22 / 2026-10-24? Why not 2025/01/22 - 2026/10/24?

Because this is ISO 8601 date format, the standard date format that intentionally uses dashes to not confuse 25/01/22, 01/22/25 and 22/01/26 which are the same date in different formats (that's why it uses dashes for dates, as for why it uses / for interval I have no idea)

I know ISO 8601, but that doesn't answer my question. Let me rephrase this, why was a format intuitive to a machine chosen instead of a format which feels more intuitive to a human?

I think YYYY/MM/DD - YYYY/MM/DD will mean the correct thing to many more people than YYYY-MM-DD / YYYY-MM-DD, which I suspect many will interpret as an OR and not a RANGE.

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#67

Post by otikik »

atoav wrote: post #44

Note that Mermaid also supports timelines (if it is new enough): https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/timeline.html Mermaid is supported by gitlab/github and other markdown editors (within code blocks).

The charts you linked don't look like the same kind of chart to me. There's information about what happened after what, but the information about how much each task took seems missing.

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#68

Post by dewey »

tiffanyh wrote: post #24

Be careful. Gruber (who has trademark in “Markdown”), appears to not like people using his trademark name. https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...

Here's the license (http://daringfireball.net/projects/downloads/Markdown_1.0.1....) and I don't think Gruber mentioned anything about a "trademark"? It seems like it was mostly about the name of his project just being taken unethically. Just like if someone would take a open source project name and makes it look like an official for when it's not. Maybe not a trademark infringement, but certainly not nice or ethical.

Re: Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines

#69

Post by zamadatix »

dustedcodes wrote: post #65
dimava wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is ISO 8601 date format, the standard date format that intentionally uses dashes to not confuse 25/01/22, 01/22/25 and 22/01/26 which are the same date in different formats (that's why it uses dashes for dates, as for why it uses / for interval I have no idea)

I know ISO 8601, but that doesn't answer my question. Let me rephrase this, why was a format intuitive to a machine chosen instead of a format which feels more intuitive to a human? I think YYYY/MM/DD - YYYY/MM/DD will mean the correct thing to many more people than YYYY-MM-DD / YYYY-MM-DD, which I suspect many will interpret as an OR and not a RANGE.

EDTF has advantages in less ambiguity. At the same time, Markwhen does also support non-EDTF dates too. The docs do a good job of explaining both https://docs.markwhen.com/syntax/dates-and-ranges.html

Personally I think it goes a little over-flexible on support for non-strict formatted dates to the point it becomes difficult to figure out what a given date string is going to result in rather than feeling easier to use. That's probably part of the reason the primary example uses the clearer format.

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