Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MDN converted to Markdown

openwebdocs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 140 posts

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#101

Post by nerdponx »

thiht wrote: post #90
nerdponx wrote: post #6

It's too bad that AsciiDoc still hasn't really caught on like Markdown. It's a whole lot nicer for more-complicated documents. I understand their reasons for not using it here, but it still seems like a perfect fit for this task. Eclipse still seems to be working on a formal spec, but hopefully that will help implementations to grow and adoption to increase. In any case, avoiding raw HTML is a huge improvement. I lik…

I used AsciiDoc for a while at my first job because it looked better than Markdown on paper, but I hated it. The syntax made no sense to me, and AsciiDoctor (the de facto tool to generate formatted AsciiDoc documents at the time, not sure if it has changed) was a pain in the ass to use and the output was basically impossible to configure (I just wanted to use the colors of my company). Markdown feels a lot of less po…

Yep, AsciiDoc implementations/tooling are a big part of why I think it has been slow to catch on. I think a standardized specification will go a long way towards addressing that. At least then implementations can target the specifications, or at least target some well-defined subset of it, and we won't be stuck with one or two monolithic legacy applications.

To be clear, I don't see AsciiDoc as a Markdown replacement. But part of what I like about it is that it's simple enough to be used in most contexts where Markdown is currently used.

I wrote my masters thesis with Markdown, Pandoc, and GPP, using Pandoc to generate a PDF via TeX. If I could use the same workflow but with AsciiDoc instead of Markdown, I would.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#102

Post by rjsw »

andylynch wrote: post #43
smashed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are on the right track but may be over estimating the "average" internet user capabilities? I had to migrate a couple of projects from awful, big ridden, wysiwyg editors to markdown and it's a huge challenge. Many people expect everything to work just as Ms Office/word does. Anything behaving in any way different than their benchmark is wrong.. Now, going from such a mindset to Markdown is a huge endeavou…

I really don’t get the push for markdown etc over WYSIWYG for everyday people. The _very first_ web browser was also an GUI editor, and then you already had proper rich text editors since at least the Macintosh. Why should users not expect something as basic as formatting text to follow UI conventions established through what’s now forty-odd years of use by billions or people? It is akin to asking them not to complai…

Markdown works better in a VCS than WYSIWYG formats.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#103

Post by barbariangrunge »

pacaro wrote: post #91
barbariangrunge wrote: post #81

I’ve been using a writing app lately that uses markdown, and that has an export feature to produce documents that interpret your markup in various ways. It’s rather nice to use but is missing a few things: I wish there was a markdown tag to indicate “title” or “author byline” so that # and ## weren’t inconsistently reserved by certain formatting styles. Altogether, it is a great system though Off topic: recommend a n…

Have you tried pandoc got client side conversion?

I’ll try it!

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#104

Post by radarsat1 »

Karunamon wrote: post #93
radarsat1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what was the deal with Betamax though? was VHS actually easier or have any advantages, or did it just win due to marketing? (honest curiosity here, i don't know the technicalities)

One benefit I heard called out was that early Betamax capped the tape capacity to one hour, which meant you couldn't record things like full sports games and quite a few movies. Sony didn't change this until VHS came along with its slower tape speeds and more recording time, and by then it was too late. Also, VHS was cheaper, and while Betamax was technically inferior, it wasn't inferior in a way that the average buy…

interesting thanks!

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#105

Post by radarsat1 »

jcranmer wrote: post #98
radarsat1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, given the proximity of England to the Celtic world, why did English not borrow more from Gaelic? Hopefully it's not a stupid question, I realize that the language probably largely developed in Saxony, but I don't know much about how it made its way to the British isles.

There is a lot that is not clear about the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain. The obvious archaeological evidence suggests a very abrupt shock that sees Roman Britain almost completely replaced by Anglo-Saxon migration in maybe a generation or two. This has traditionally been interpreted as effectively a complete population replacement, although this has been challenged in more recent archaeology. Probably, I would sa…

Super interesting thanks, I'll have to read up on the Danelaw, first time I've heard of that!

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#106

Post by nvrspyx »

thayne wrote: post #85
nerdponx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has a steeper learning curve Does it? I think Markdown "won" for a variety of reasons (Github? Slack? Pandoc?). I don't think AsciiDoc is so much more complicated than Markdown that people can't learn it quickly. The reason Markdown is now standard is that people like standardized things. They want to use the same syntax in their chatroom, forum, ad-hoc readme filed, and doc comments in code. And if they're already…

I think it has a higher learning curve if you include everything in the language, because asciidoc has so many more features than markdown. But if you limit asciidoc to the subset that is comparable to markdown, I don't think it has a higher learning curve.

In fact, most of markdown is compatible with asciidoc. The markdown syntax for headings, monospace, quotes, lists, code blocks, and section breaks all work.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#107

Post by sli »

urban_alien wrote: post #87
radarsat1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what was the deal with Betamax though? was VHS actually easier or have any advantages, or did it just win due to marketing? (honest curiosity here, i don't know the technicalities)

The porn industry adopted VHS and managed to make it the standard, basically

This is a myth. Porn was available on Beta and far more non-porn VHS tapes were being sold than porn. Porn only made up a small fraction of VHS sales. Even the idea that Beta was strictly better than VHS is mostly modern myth.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#108

Post by kragen »

iamtedd wrote: post #35
swyx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown is "worse is better". AsciiDoc is more powerful, but has a steeper learning curve, therefore it lost. tale as old as tech. EDIT: i'm compiling a list of "Worse is Better" technology battles: - Mixed paradigm languages vs Functional languages - Typescript vs Flow - React+Redux beat Angular and Elm - VHS beat Betamax - AC beat DC - what else? please share more here https://hashnode.com/preview/636602dec7fec996…

In what way is DC better than AC? To my knowledge AC rightfully won - much easier to transport over long distances, whereas DC required a generator nearly on every city block (among other reasons).

DC needs a substantially higher voltage to kill you than AC. You can hold 100VDC wires in your fingers and be fine, though if you try this, I strongly recommend doing it with the other hand in your pocket and no path to ground, in case your hand is sweatier than average.

The lower danger of transmission lines is less important once you're committed to stepping voltages up and down, because HVDC transmission lines can still kill you, and there's no real reason we couldn't be using 48VAC inside our houses instead of 120VAC or 240VAC, which would be a lot safer. Historically, though, AC came as a package with transformers and higher-voltage transmission/distribution to substations, and without such super low voltages in houses.

You're exaggerating the technical advantage of AC by a couple of orders of magnitude; you can reasonably transmit 100VDC power about a kilometer, and Edison did, so it's a generator on every 314 city blocks or so.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#109

Post by wbamberg »

photochemsyn wrote: post #72
swyx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown is "worse is better". AsciiDoc is more powerful, but has a steeper learning curve, therefore it lost. tale as old as tech. EDIT: i'm compiling a list of "Worse is Better" technology battles: - Mixed paradigm languages vs Functional languages - Typescript vs Flow - React+Redux beat Angular and Elm - VHS beat Betamax - AC beat DC - what else? please share more here https://hashnode.com/preview/636602dec7fec996…

As far as MDN Web Docs, what about variable declaration, i.e. deprecating the JS var in favor of let and const, universally? var has some weird behavior (hoisting) and it seems (no expert here) that only using let and const in code has many benefits. Is it historical inertia, backwards compatibility, preference?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking about, but if it's our use of `var` in code examples, we had a big project this summer to eradicate `var` in favour of `const` and `let`.

This started out as a project for the Writing Day at the Write the Docs Portland conference (https://openwebdocs.org/content/posts/writing-day-wtd-portla...). It then continued as a much bigger thing: https://openwebdocs.org/content/posts/2022-q3-report/#modern.... Much of the work was done by volunteers, and it's a great example of the kind of project that I don't think would have been possible back when MDN content was in a Wiki.

If you're asking about whether we should un-recommend `var` more strongly: looking at the page for `var` (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...) - well, maybe you are right...

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#110

Post by mtts »

jcranmer wrote: post #98
radarsat1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, given the proximity of England to the Celtic world, why did English not borrow more from Gaelic? Hopefully it's not a stupid question, I realize that the language probably largely developed in Saxony, but I don't know much about how it made its way to the British isles.

There is a lot that is not clear about the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain. The obvious archaeological evidence suggests a very abrupt shock that sees Roman Britain almost completely replaced by Anglo-Saxon migration in maybe a generation or two. This has traditionally been interpreted as effectively a complete population replacement, although this has been challenged in more recent archaeology. Probably, I would sa…

If I’m not mistaken the latest research on this topic incorporates the results of DNA studies that seem to suggest there was indeed a population replacement (made possible in part by the very large number of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants and the very much reduced, as a result of the upheavals after the departure of the Romans, number of Britons).

The linguistic evidence has always suggested complete replacement. Even with the prestige language of invaders taking over you would expect some geographical names, especially for small, insignificant and / or out of the way features to persist and yet in England there is pretty much not a single place name that has Celtic origins (outside of Cornwall of course)

Post reply on HN