Why Is Markdown Popular? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#141

Post by mcluck » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #60

> The HTML output is antiquated at best. Though the basic structure of headers and paragraphs is generally semantic, there's no modern semantic elements such as main, article, section, nav, header, footer, figure, picture, etc. Embedding videos, social media widgets, etc. isn't possible at all. While most other complaints sounded more like the typical markdown grumpiness I've heard before, I do find this an interesti…

There seems to be some conflating going on here. As the author mentioned, the spec space is a scattered mess. For the same reason, all markdown to HTML compilers are following their own rules (unless they specifically call out the recommendations of one of the specs.) So if you are getting crappy HTML output, get (or write since it's so simple) a better compiler. Many markdown to HTML tools will let you apply templates and specify which tags to use for a given piece of markup. For the layperson that's probably asking a lot but for the technical crowd, it's your own fault if you aren't happy with the output

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#142

Post by jonny_eh » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

virtualritz wrote: post #77

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…

> Markdown will never get beyond developers. My brother wrote his master thesis in LaTex. Being a non-techie (he's an archeologist) I had to do all the 'fixing'. We switched to LaTex after both Word and OpenOffice Writer made working with the document a non-option. I also used git to manage changes. This was 2009. He could not have done it without my help with this setup. But he could also not have done it without me…

How about Google Docs?

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#143

Post by mcluck » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

throwaway13337 wrote: post #99

Has anyone made a markdown only web browser? Consumers should be able to control the presentation of the content they view. They should provide the theme. Markdown could provide the minimal content and linking. It seems like it would be possible to remake all the major web properties this way while returning control back to the consumer and preventing egregious advertising, tracking, and popups. Reddit, Google Search…

You might be interested in Gemini and the browsers implemented for it

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#144

Post by ycombobreaker » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #131

ycombobreaker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh there's "Markdown" and there's "markdown". Slack definitely has markdown, and any argument to the contrary is a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I personally use hyperlink text, bullet lists, tt/bold/italics, quote blocks, pre blocks.

A few years ago, Slack was "plain text entry box for markdown" In ~2019, it changed to "WYSIWYG with markdown converted to WYSIWYG as you type". If you type "Hello *world*" the * will disappear and the "world" will be bolded - and you can also get bold with Ctrl+B or pressing a 'bold' button or pasting bold rich text. There's an option to disable it [1], so if your slack experience is different you might have WYSIWYG…

Yes I disabled the WYSIWYG editor the day it landed.

The exact syntax of bold/italics is just a flavor... "markdown" as a design pattern vs. "Markdown" as a specific implementation or specification.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#145

Post by themadturk » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

The_Colonel wrote: post #9

I like Markdown for self-contained one page documents with basic formatting - reddit comments, README.md etc. For anything more it's just inadequate.

I wrote a 98,000+ word novel in Markdown. Pandoc renders it perfectly to Word. The text included a title page, epigraphs in italic, headers of various levels for parts, chapters, scenes. All I had to do in Word was make sure my paragraph styles were set up the way I wanted (and that Pandoc knew what they were supposed to look like), then run a macro to get rid of the cr/lfs between paragraphs.

I don't know if the novel was any good, but it looked good. Markdown was certainly adequate.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#146

Post by pcthrowaway » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

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…

> > Markdown will never get beyond developers

I mean here we are using markdown in hacker news comments where there won't even be any formatting.

But before "new reddit", everyone was using Markdown in reddit as well. And no, not everyone who uses reddit is a programmer

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#147

Post by amai » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

This seems to be another guy who doesn't know https://quarto.org/.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#148

Post by amai » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

When will hackernews support Markdown to it's comments?

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#149

Post by Fishkins » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 5:44 PM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #80

kevincox wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - .

There's an option to post in markdown instead of WYSIWYG. The one and only reason I use Slack's WYSIWYG instead of markdown is because their markdown parser doesn't handle links. If they just fixed that, I could stop using their WYSIWYG and its atrocious handling of inline code blocks.

Have you tried recently? There was a period when I also had WYSIWYG enabled solely because markdown links weren't working for me, but that's been fixed (at least for me) for a while now.

Re: Why Is Markdown Popular?

#150

Post by fgeiger » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

gilbetron wrote: post #112

virtualritz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markdown will never get beyond developers. My brother wrote his master thesis in LaTex. Being a non-techie (he's an archeologist) I had to do all the 'fixing'. We switched to LaTex after both Word and OpenOffice Writer made working with the document a non-option. I also used git to manage changes. This was 2009. He could not have done it without my help with this setup. But he could also not have done it without me…

Random question, why is she branching? Why doesn't she just commit straight to master?

My partner wrote her Social Science dissertation in LaTeX and also used branches. They are particularly helpful when you hand out a version to others for feedback or proof reading while still working on the document yourself.