Thoughts on Markdown
smashingmagazine.com
Thoughts on Markdown
1–10 of 167 posts
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#2Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.
In the beginning, there was HTML, and it was good. Then "modern content creators" did not "want to learn syntax", created "tools that edited and rendered HTML differently and inconsistently", added hundreds of unnecessary tags in it, then started to get smart about "semantic information" and introduced HTML-5-style tags like , which too few people use...
Techies felt that all to be unworkable and did a new thing. They remembered text files being good, and started to call a very minimal syntax "Markdown", with a common core large enough to be almost universally understood. And now we have this article again, which reads a lot like it was about HTML, ca. 1995.
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#3Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. In the beginning, there was HTML, and it was good. Then "modern content creators" did not "want to learn syntax", created "tools that edited and rendered HTML differently and inconsistently", added hundreds of unnecessary tags in it, then started to get smart about "semantic information" and introduced HTML-5-style tags like , which too few people use... Te…
In the beginning, was runoff. At least runoff was around on DEC machines in 1975. I wrote a couple term papers with it, Markdown is hardly different.
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#4Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. In the beginning, there was HTML, and it was good. Then "modern content creators" did not "want to learn syntax", created "tools that edited and rendered HTML differently and inconsistently", added hundreds of unnecessary tags in it, then started to get smart about "semantic information" and introduced HTML-5-style tags like , which too few people use... Te…
I, for one, welcome our new semantic overlords
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#5I agree with a lot in this article. I too have seen 'non-technical' users struggle with Markdown. The popularity of Markdown among developers also reminds me about SSGs (Static Site Generators). Two technologies loved by developers - and no-one else.
"For limited use cases, like blog posts of simple rich text with images and links, markdown will get the job done."
I'd argue it's even less suitable than that. Developers never look beyond Markdown when writing documentation or articles and are thus blissly unaware of the much richer writing possibilties of using HTML (which is simple to learn, unlike CSS).
Full HTML also gives readers a much better reading experience. In Markdown, even a simple image caption is not possible.
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#6Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. In the beginning, there was HTML, and it was good. Then "modern content creators" did not "want to learn syntax", created "tools that edited and rendered HTML differently and inconsistently", added hundreds of unnecessary tags in it, then started to get smart about "semantic information" and introduced HTML-5-style tags like , which too few people use... Te…
> Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.
HTML5 was introduced in 2008, whereas Markdown was published in 2004.
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#7Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. In the beginning, there was HTML, and it was good. Then "modern content creators" did not "want to learn syntax", created "tools that edited and rendered HTML differently and inconsistently", added hundreds of unnecessary tags in it, then started to get smart about "semantic information" and introduced HTML-5-style tags like , which too few people use... Te…
[deleted]
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#8I've said it so many times my throat is sore but here goes again...
As with literally everything, it depends. Markdown is lovely for tech documentation, notes and journaling. It's simple and beautiful and mostly independent of layout.
Want to author something rich and expressive which has a modern web audience in front of it (either end user or editor) and it's probably not the right tool.
I work with large numbers of - let me call them "creative editors and authors". They want to embed video, pullquotes, tables, interactives. They want to float images, include audio and much more.
Markdown is not for them. Something block based and visual, namely Gutenberg or similar - is.
As ever (voice grows increasingly hoarse...) it's dependent on needs.
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#9I've said it so many times my throat is sore but here goes again... As with literally everything, it depends. Markdown is lovely for tech documentation, notes and journaling. It's simple and beautiful and mostly independent of layout. Want to author something rich and expressive which has a modern web audience in front of it (either end user or editor) and it's probably not the right tool. I work with large numbers o…
[deleted]
Re: Thoughts on Markdown
#10I like markdown. At the moment it is somewhat like HTML without CSS. Great for structuring documents. Not so good when it comes to formatting. There are extensions to it, but I like clean flavor.