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

We should have Markdown-rendered websites

ipfs.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 351 posts

Re: We should have Markdown-rendered websites

#71

Post by ElevenLathe »

jmull wrote: post #48

This doesn't really make sense, for a couple reasons... There are many flavors of markdown. We'd need a standards body, compatibility suites, etc., and for all the browser vendors to adopt it. Meanwhile, markdown is designed to transform to HTML, which browsers already render. Adding a markdown-to-html plugin/step to your web server or publishing process is not exactly the most burdensome thing, relative to everythin…

I get this, but OTOH it is IMO best to distribute digital artifacts in the format that is most useful for editing or creating derivative works. This is the free software philosophy but also a societal good. Many of us learned HTML and web technologies by reading the source code of websites, and we've closed that door behind us with all of the build steps that turn our actual code into a computer-readable-only mess which we send out for consumption by normal users' browsers. It would be nice if "view source" showed you something like what the author actually wrote in their text editor.

Re: We should have Markdown-rendered websites

#73

Post by znpy »

jmull wrote: post #48

This doesn't really make sense, for a couple reasons... There are many flavors of markdown. We'd need a standards body, compatibility suites, etc., and for all the browser vendors to adopt it. Meanwhile, markdown is designed to transform to HTML, which browsers already render. Adding a markdown-to-html plugin/step to your web server or publishing process is not exactly the most burdensome thing, relative to everythin…

I came to write something similar to this, basically.

If anything we should push for websites to divide content from presentation: if html tags were used properly there would be no need for markdown.

And on that matter, pushing for proper use of html tags in documents is a more achievable goal than asking everybody to just drop html and write markdown.

Re: We should have Markdown-rendered websites

#74

Post by pclmulqdq »

We already do. They use static site generators to produce HTML (a good interchange format) from a customized form of markdown (which is not standardized at all and very customizable). This state of the world is totally fine - it works well for both viewers and content producers.

Re: We should have Markdown-rendered websites

#75

Post by jayd16 »

hospadar wrote: post #26

I mean it _sounds_ good, but how will we cram a million ads down user's throats and measure every twitch of their input devices? It's almost as though the author is suggesting that web site proprietors might be more interested in "serving content" than "driving engagement" which I find disturbing and upsetting. /s

You can do all that in a markdown page just fine, no? Can't you throw a tracking pixel in markdown?

Re: We should have Markdown-rendered websites

#78

Post by thih9 »

enos_feedler wrote: post #59
graypegg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

—I’d say it’s the other way around isn’t it? Wouldn’t Markdown be a subset of HTML, since all markdown can be expressed in HTML but not all HTML can be expressed in Markdown?— Edit: Markdown can contain HTML that gets meaningfully interpreted as markup as well. I’d also say HTML is not difficult to write, even for someone new to the concept. I don’t think anyone making their GeoCities homepage was too strained learni…

If say 10% of the pool of internet users at the time could make an HTML page on Geocities, what % of today’s pool of internet users could do it? The pool has gotten much larger and much less tech savvy on average.

Then again, personal content is no longer shared via personal homepage but via Facebook/YouTube/TikTok/Medium/etc these days.
Post reply on HN