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Why Is Markdown Popular?

russellbeattie.com

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Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#61

Post by WolfOliver »

orwin wrote: post #54
WolfOliver wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, but there is fun ways to do it. when i used Latx a lot, i had an awk script that wrote the table in my file from a CSV. Also, now i think most data inspection tools (panda and mysql at least, probably others) spit their data in the terminal in markdown form, so its a cpy pasta anyway. the only issue with markdown is image alignment. And to be honest, WYSIWYG editors are shit at this too. I'd rather not loose my t…

yes, for image alignment latex is best. Sometimes the result is not perfect, but at least you do not have to think about it.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#62

Post by jiggawatts »

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…

I came to the same conclusion years ago and made myself and "alternate" markdown-like format that superficially looks the same, but has a grammar compatible with parser generators like ANTLR.

Took me about a week to produce something that could generate a nice document object model, and spit out HTML (or anything you please).

The concept is powerful. The specific Markdown implementation however is too messy for proper tooling.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#63

Post by ZiiS »

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…

If you include Slack's Markdoon then they default to the WYSIWYG editor so probably > 1%.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#64

Post by wallmountedtv »

> Markdown will never get beyond developers.

Did the author just look past Slack, Reddit, Discord, Teams, and more? I am honestly lost how one could make such a statement when its already in so many places where the primary audience is non-developers. They even list Reddit in their own post, but still make this statement?!

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#67

Post by tambourine_man »

> ###*this is __test__* … Is that bold with italics? Italic bold? In a heading?

That’s not a markdown-only characteristic, it’s the same with HTML.

> Markdown will never get beyond developers

Ever heard of WhatsApp? A few billion people use it everyday.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#68

Post by kevincox »

ketzu wrote: post #48
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 are also the multitude of people that use markdown in chat applications, which usually implement a form of WYSIWYG editing, e.g., Slack.

Does slack even use markdown? It seems to me that it just uses some markdown-like sybtax as a shortcut for generating its rich text. Like Google Docs will start a list after -.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#69

Post by prepend »

chrismorgan wrote: post #56
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…

Your first two points are misleading: 1. The article conflated lightweight markup languages as a class and Markdown in various places, and you’re making it worse by performing that conflation in different places. Markdown was a specific invention which took parts of ancient customs (some from at least as far back as the typewriter era), but applied various other rules never before seen. It was absolutely not just a c…

I make markdown tables by hand. Very simple ones. And simple is good.

Statements like “no one” are silly because they are easy to disprove and then get into “well maybe you do, but I don’t; therefore…”

There are lots of tables in markdown. I’m not sure how you definitively know if they are made by hand or cut and pasted from a helper tool.

Anyway, it’s a dumb argument to make. The beauty of markdown is that if you don’t understand something, just don’t use it. It’s not like there are many tables in blog posts or comments any way.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#70

Post by chrisweekly »

jiggawatts wrote: post #62
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…

I came to the same conclusion years ago and made myself and "alternate" markdown-like format that superficially looks the same, but has a grammar compatible with parser generators like ANTLR. Took me about a week to produce something that could generate a nice document object model, and spit out HTML (or anything you please). The concept is powerful. The specific Markdown implementation however is too messy for prope…

"too messy for proper tooling"

Obsidian and its many amazing plugins are powerful evidence to the contrary.

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