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MDN converted to Markdown

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Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#131

Post by rhaway84773 »

tgv wrote: post #38
gherkinnn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Javascript vs * - English vs * Both awful languages in many ways. And yet, here we are. Also who the fuck wants to speak Esperanto? In some cases I don’t think it’s “worse is better”, much as “the flexible beats the over-designed ivory tower”. Another way of looking at it is “capabilities matter, vulnerabilities don’t”. Think of a river carving its way through a valley. It is terribly undesigned and messy but it fl…

English isn't a bad language; its spelling is highly inconsistent, but for the rest it's simpler than most other languages. The only advantage Esperanto has is that it doesn't give (much of) an advantage to pre-existing native speakers. For the rest, it's perhaps even harder to learn than English, and --when hypothetically adopted on a large scale-- will develop into regional dialects.

The success of English is not the result of a “worse is better” situation. It’s the result of the fact that the English colonialists much of the world and then after colonialism ended and the world became more global through trade and communications, the biggest economy in the world with the biggest media industry in the history of the world spoke English.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#132

Post by rhaway84773 »

salmo wrote: post #66
iopq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish spelling is better, pronunciation is easier (no th, only 5 vowels, etc.), native speakers almost as numerable, allows you to understand Portuguese, Italian, etc. It wasn't chosen, America just won

I think an appealing thing about English is the ridiculous vocabulary. When it doesn’t have a word, it just steals one from another language. We have a French-based word that’s a “fancy” way to say an English-based synonym from the court vs common language situation with the Normans. Then borrowed liberally from Greek and Latin during the enlightenment, and every other language when colonialism kicked in (including a…

Every language steals words from other languages. Heck, eastern Asian languages have stolen an entire script from English (pinyin).

There’s nothing unique about English in this regard.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#133

Post by rrwo »

mtts wrote: post #110
jcranmer wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

There are a few place names of Celtic origin, for example, Kilburn.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#135

Post by tgv »

iopq wrote: post #100
hombre_fatal wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish has its own obstacles. Like all the conjugations and the subjunctive. Or how verbose it is. Meanwhile compare it to English tense grammar like I did run, I do run, I will run. I don’t think technical language comparisons are all that enlightening about which one is “best”.

I have been running, I had been running, I will have had run, I would have had been running English has a large amount of tenses as well, and if I were you I wouldn't discount the English subjunctive either

Spanish has a similar amount of tenses, some expressed in inflections, others through auxiliary verbs. Spanish doesn't have the obsession with the gerund ("I go home" is fine), but has (im)perfect past, plusquam perfect, and future tenses, combinations (no habría pensado: wouldn't have thought) and conditionals in all, just like English. They just don't correspond 1-1.

The subjunctive in English is a bit of joke in comparison to the Spanish one.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#136

Post by hombre_fatal »

iopq wrote: post #100
hombre_fatal wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish has its own obstacles. Like all the conjugations and the subjunctive. Or how verbose it is. Meanwhile compare it to English tense grammar like I did run, I do run, I will run. I don’t think technical language comparisons are all that enlightening about which one is “best”.

I have been running, I had been running, I will have had run, I would have had been running English has a large amount of tenses as well, and if I were you I wouldn't discount the English subjunctive either

I'm not saying English has no nuance beyond my example.

But this relatively simple grammar is English's strength. Consider how you translate your examples into other languages, especially the future hypotheticals that aren't a trivial concept to communicate period yet the rules for producing them are still simple in English.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#137

Post by salmo »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #132
salmo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an appealing thing about English is the ridiculous vocabulary. When it doesn’t have a word, it just steals one from another language. We have a French-based word that’s a “fancy” way to say an English-based synonym from the court vs common language situation with the Normans. Then borrowed liberally from Greek and Latin during the enlightenment, and every other language when colonialism kicked in (including a…

Every language steals words from other languages. Heck, eastern Asian languages have stolen an entire script from English (pinyin). There’s nothing unique about English in this regard.

The stealing isn’t unique for sure. But most of the vocabulary in our language is borrowed words. Mostly just the “sight words” kids learn in early school is what remains of Old English. And many English words are the rougher equivalent of a borrowed, nicer words.

Most languages were pretty calcified by Old or Middle English, and English doesn’t seem to be letting up. But no language is static.

But with tech and mass communication, English is squeezing into many languages.

Pinyin is kind of weird. It’s not borrowing concepts, but lending itself to translation in and out. Based off prior western attempts and observation of Japanese success. Typesetting is more practical, and then computers really push it… the latter I feel awkward about. 1/2 is the typesetting benefit, 1/2 is eurocentrism. I dunno. Maybe I’m overthinking.

The vocabulary is more interesting to me because it’s importing ideas or nuances around ideas. It’s primarily nouns, though.

Learning other languages is great to see the world differently. Even in just French, which is fairly close: eg faire doesn’t have a real English equivalent, but makes total sense. It’s like how I learn programming languages I’ll never use for work, just to see things from their perspective.

I don’t know enough about Asian languages. Working on fleshing out my history knowledge now from Asian perspectives vs what I got in school. Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to address a language.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#138

Post by Marta_B »

samus wrote: post #118
andylynch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Technical users are an important user segment as well, especially those used to advanced text editors and IDEs. They don't have the patience to conform to the changing and often poorly thought-through user interfaces of text processors and want the flexibility to use more powerful tools if required. Do it like JIRA: give them both. People used to GUIs can use the WYSIWYG interface, and power users can use Markdown.

CKEditor also gives that option – where you can type in Markdown if you prefer that over the rich-text UI. So both sides can be happy.

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#139

Post by nvrspyx »

jonhohle wrote: post #95
nvrspyx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are features that don't exist in Markdown though, unless there's some implementation that adds these. Also, the context of the parent comment and this post is documentation. So, is it worse than HTML? Maybe, if you need those features often, but not for documentation where you'll rarely, if ever, use those.

At least an originally designed markdown falls back to HTML when it doesn’t directly support a particular feature. With Pandoc, markdown can fall back to LaTeX as well.

You can do the same in Asciidoc with the passthrough feature, either as an inline passthrough or a passthrough block. Granted, it's not syntax-less like Markdown, but it's there if you need it.

Inline example:

    pass:[underlined]
    or 
    +++underlined+++

Re: MDN converted to Markdown

#140

Post by keybored »

xigoi wrote: post #46
keybored wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to use quotes (or any other symbol) sometimes based on learned rules is a big no-no for lightweight markup in my book.

In Markdown, you sometimes have to put a backslash before special characters.

> In Markdown, you sometimes have to put a backslash before special characters.

I think I get it now. Yes, I agree that sometimes-rules for escaping is bad. Should have to require escaping metacharacters all the time, not just in certain contexts.

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