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Why Is Markdown Popular?

russellbeattie.com

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Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#41

Post by mpweiher »

threatofrain wrote: post #34
Falkon1313 wrote: post #25

>It’s barely a spec Which is fitting. It evolved long before the term 'markdown' itself existed, a practice having been used in email and usenet and BBSes for many years before. The 'spec' is just trying to codify the already-existing usage, which evolved organically in many different areas by many different people. >You need to use a WYSIWYG tool or you don’t use it. No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a…

> No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a WYSIWYG for markdown. That would completely negate the point. > Probably 99% wrong. I've never met anyone that chose to make things more difficult for themselves by using a clunky WYSIWYG instead of just typing the markdown in a text editor. Sometimes that's an IDE, but that's beside the point. Plain text does matter. You repeat this point but the trend of markdown…

> the trend of markdown apps is to this direction.

Of course it is. Because for plain text markdown you don't need a markdown-specific or even markdown-aware app. Any old plain text editor will do.

Which is kind of the point.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#43

Post by [deleted] »

Pereza0 wrote: post #40
threatofrain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a WYSIWYG for markdown. That would completely negate the point. > Probably 99% wrong. I've never met anyone that chose to make things more difficult for themselves by using a clunky WYSIWYG instead of just typing the markdown in a text editor. Sometimes that's an IDE, but that's beside the point. Plain text does matter. You repeat this point but the trend of markdown…

There is really little way of knowing who is actually using these apps vs who is just firing up an editor. Just because apps are being developed in this direction doesn't automatically mean they are becoming the norm. The fact they are leaning towards WYSIWYG makes sense to me when you try to think of other features you could have for editing Markdown that something that, say, Vim can't do... I cant really think of m…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#46

Post by xigoi »

longrod wrote: post #33

HTML is not for writing but for creating UIs. That was why it was created anyway. Markdown was specifically created for writing. It has no other purpose. Saying that Markdown is bad is really naive. There are not many ways to specify formatting without it getting in the way of your writing. Markdown is popular because it strikes the right balance where reading a markdown document requires a lot less visual strain com…

HTML was created as a document format. The UI features were added later.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#47

Post by vintermann »

roenxi wrote: post #38
stevage wrote: post #7

The author is mixing up two different things: the concept of markdown (text with a little bit of light formatting mixed into it with easy-on-the-eye syntax) and the existing specification of Markdown-with-a-capital-M (and its flow on effects). The concept is fine. The author may not want to manually write markdown, and may think that no one else wants to either, but they are wrong. It's very very useful to have a way…

> On the actual spec/implementation: yes, it's a complete disaster. Especially the way it is kind of mapped on to HTML, so you get weird things like writing "1. blah; \ 1. blah" makes a numbered list with a 1 and a 2. There is a trade off here though. When people sit down to write something that doesn't have weird edge cases they're not likely to end up with a lightweight markup like Markdown. So simultaneously the s…

I've heard very similar arguments, for Perl, a couple of decades ago.

And yeah, it's not entirely wrong. Perl was useful, too.

But I desperately want the thing that is for markdown what modern JavaScript, Python and Go have become for Perl.

I want a markup language that supports the most basic things, looks reasonable on the eyes in un-rendered form (so we don't need terrible rich text editors everywhere), and is very friendly to being embedded in bigger documents of its own type or plaintext. It should be possible to have that with a proper, unambiguous (both for humans and for computers) spec.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#48

Post by ketzu »

threatofrain wrote: post #34
Falkon1313 wrote: post #25

>It’s barely a spec Which is fitting. It evolved long before the term 'markdown' itself existed, a practice having been used in email and usenet and BBSes for many years before. The 'spec' is just trying to codify the already-existing usage, which evolved organically in many different areas by many different people. >You need to use a WYSIWYG tool or you don’t use it. No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a…

> No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a WYSIWYG for markdown. That would completely negate the point. > Probably 99% wrong. I've never met anyone that chose to make things more difficult for themselves by using a clunky WYSIWYG instead of just typing the markdown in a text editor. Sometimes that's an IDE, but that's beside the point. Plain text does matter. You repeat this point but the trend of markdown…

There are also the multitude of people that use markdown in chat applications, which usually implement a form of WYSIWYG editing, e.g., Slack.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#49

Post by rawoke083600 »

In this case (MD) my pet-theory... "Simplicity"

There are usually a few "models/reasons" to explain adoption.

These models/reasons (mentioned below) all have their own "threshold or critical values" depending on model-and-industry

1. Simplicity: (a.k.a accessibility) MD is def simpler than let say HTML. I can teach someone MD in a day and they will be 'productive' in it for a wide variety of tasks. I can't teach someone HTML + CSS in a day AND be productive.

2. Price: If you are x5 cheaper than your competitor but provide lets say 0.7 of the feature set you probably going to win (PS. X5 and 0.7 are the variables to be solved and not real numbers)

3. Better: If you are x10 better and let say only 2.5x more expensive you probably going to win as well.

4. Established-Network(audience): Good example is SQL or USB. Neither is really fantastic and there are certainly better and cheaper solutions out there. Yet it's hard to argue with something in tech that is "good-enough".

Would love to see some big-ass economic study of these and their critical values. Examples: VHS-BetaMax, WhatsApp-SMS-Blackberry, USB-XYZ etc.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#50

Post by WolfOliver »

mpweiher wrote: post #41
threatofrain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, no you absolutely don't. Almost no one uses a WYSIWYG for markdown. That would completely negate the point. > Probably 99% wrong. I've never met anyone that chose to make things more difficult for themselves by using a clunky WYSIWYG instead of just typing the markdown in a text editor. Sometimes that's an IDE, but that's beside the point. Plain text does matter. You repeat this point but the trend of markdown…

> the trend of markdown apps is to this direction. Of course it is. Because for plain text markdown you don't need a markdown-specific or even markdown-aware app. Any old plain text editor will do. Which is kind of the point.

then the critic of the article is valid again. Its just not fun to write a table in a plain text editor.
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