Writing HTML by hand • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#41

Post by rudasn » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

the_gipsy wrote: post #14

MrVandemar wrote: post #13

HTML is how I write . I struggled with Markdown (and various other mark up formats) for a long time, until I realised that, for me, nothing beats plain HTML for simplicity and expressive power. I now use HTML the way people generally use markdown: as an open, easy to read, easy to write, plain-text format for taking notes, writing articles, expressing thoughts, and so on. I didn't really choose HTML, I just sort of n…

I really love Elm's way of writing html. It's like writing html without closing tags, just indentation.

Check out haml. Quite similar approach I think.

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#42

Post by kome » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

brainzap wrote: post #24

MrVandemar wrote: post #13

HTML is how I write . I struggled with Markdown (and various other mark up formats) for a long time, until I realised that, for me, nothing beats plain HTML for simplicity and expressive power. I now use HTML the way people generally use markdown: as an open, easy to read, easy to write, plain-text format for taking notes, writing articles, expressing thoughts, and so on. I didn't really choose HTML, I just sort of n…

but how do you do images or video, they need some extra magic work

? ?

but i'm not sure if i understand the question...

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#43

Post by alanbernstein » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:42 PM UTC

adrianmsmith wrote: post #39

SPBS wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

links are such a pain to write though. Probably the biggest annoyance when I write in raw html.

But is [abc]( http:// ...) any better? I can never remember which brackets to use, and I've been using Markdown for years now. I never have a problem remembering the HTML syntax.

IMO, yes, it is so much more concise that it is worth memorizing.

https://mtsknn.fi/blog/how-to-remember-markdowns-link-syntax...

Think of it as a function call (mnemonically, it doesn't need to make sense conceptually).

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#44

Post by robobro » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:45 PM UTC

Lots of references to different ways to generate html and I feel obligated to mention sexpcode, a bbcode-flavored Lisp by the same guy who came up with sleepsort. Ye Olde /prog/ used bbcode for markup and /prog/ worshiped lisp so it was a natural conclusion.

I can't see how anyone would prefer xml formatting to sexp for any significantly lengthy document. I made my own homage to sexpcode called lispmark, some of my friends find it better than markdown or html..

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#45

Post by bambax » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:46 PM UTC

fuzztester wrote: post #27

bambax wrote: post #17

I don't exactly write "HTML" by hand if by HTML one means (as seems to be implied in the article) long text documents with HTML tags in it. For that I use markdown because it's faster and much easier to read. But I do write HTML templates by hand when I code webapps; it's cleaner and more efficient than use some kind of library. I tend to use DIVs with custom data- attributes; I don't know if it's a good or bad pract…

>I also code SVGs by hand and it's surprisingly easy and straightforward; most (not all, but most) drawings can be approximated by combining elementary shapes (instead of paths). Interesting. Do you have any examples of thise approximations?

Here's the Y of HN that I posted as a comment a couple of months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35898741

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#46

Post by alanbernstein » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:48 PM UTC

tincholio wrote: post #30

nologic01 wrote: post #6

For many purposes it is needlessly verbose to write html by hand. Thats why markdown became popular. But if more people do it and report their usage patterns one could maybe create a "super-markdown", i.e., the closest you could get to mapping html flexibility without the annoying XML verbosity.

Arguably, org-mode provides a "better markdown", but it's decidedly more niche.

I like org-mode, but one of my gripes is that code block syntax is too clunky.

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#47

Post by nickelcitymario » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:49 PM UTC

> Do you write HTML by hand? If so, what tags do you use most?

I like to use as many and tags as possible. Particularly for layouts. Sometimes, if I'm feeling frisky... gets invited to the party.

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#48

Post by trilbyglens » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:50 PM UTC

Emmet!

Re: Writing HTML by hand

#49

Post by nikolaplejic » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:50 PM UTC

the_gipsy wrote: post #14

MrVandemar wrote: post #13

HTML is how I write . I struggled with Markdown (and various other mark up formats) for a long time, until I realised that, for me, nothing beats plain HTML for simplicity and expressive power. I now use HTML the way people generally use markdown: as an open, easy to read, easy to write, plain-text format for taking notes, writing articles, expressing thoughts, and so on. I didn't really choose HTML, I just sort of n…

I really love Elm's way of writing html. It's like writing html without closing tags, just indentation.

Not equivalent, but arguably more useful for manual authoring: Emmet [0] was all the range a while back, and I still use it to write HTML. It comes naturally if you're used to writing CSS-like selectors, and mostly gets out of the way.

DSL-wise, I've rather enjoyed Clojure's Hiccup [1].

[0] https://emmet.io/

[1] https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup