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Markdown is holding you back

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Re: Markdown is holding you back

#71

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway150 wrote: post #49
dschuessler wrote: post #10

You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.[0] I am not aware of any Markdown tooling that does not support this. So, no, Markdown is not holding me back. It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't. [0]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html

> You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them. That is well known and I am sure the author is aware of it. The problem they are describing is not whether HTML is technically allowed inside Markdown. It's that when you are writing Markdown, you are writing Markdown, not HTML, and that comes with some problems. > It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't. In theory, yes.…

[deleted]

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#72

Post by hobofan »

jimmar wrote: post #5

Markdown is the minimum viable product. It’s easy to learn and still readable if not rendered in an alternate format. It’s great. For making PDFs, I’ve recently moved from AsciiDoc to Typst. I couldn’t find a good way to get AsciiDoc to make accessible PDFs, and I found myself struggling to control the output. Typst solves all of AsciiDoc’s problems for me. But in the end, no markup language will make you write bette…

Yes, the author conflates two different use-cases.

Markdown is the answer for "how do we enable people that don't want to invest a lot of time into producing content that's somewhat better than plain text?".

It's not trying to solve the problem of "how do we enable people that are willing to invest time into learning to produce the best possible and most structured content possible?" and I doubt that there will be language that will serve both of those use-cases very well.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#73

Post by grep_name »

amitav1 wrote: post #37

I use Org-mode w/ GNU Emacs for all of my blogging(shameless plug: amitav.net). I like Org-mode because it's easy enough to write, looks nice enough, can be exported in quite a few formats, and the code block handling is chef's kiss . It supports quite a few languages and has a feature I've seen in no other editor before, where you can chain together code from different code blocks, and evaluate it, inside of the doc…

Hmm, have you checked out Ox-Hugo? It's a pretty great system for exporting to a hugo blog from a single org file. But then I guess your blog would have to be hugo-based

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#74

Post by tcfhgj »

undeveloper wrote: post #15
jimmar wrote: post #5

Markdown is the minimum viable product. It’s easy to learn and still readable if not rendered in an alternate format. It’s great. For making PDFs, I’ve recently moved from AsciiDoc to Typst. I couldn’t find a good way to get AsciiDoc to make accessible PDFs, and I found myself struggling to control the output. Typst solves all of AsciiDoc’s problems for me. But in the end, no markup language will make you write bette…

typst looks interesting -- but how are you writing it? from what I looked at, it looks like theres an official web editor and a vscode plugin with limited support. this feels pretty limited, as someone who came in expecting something like obsidian.

you can just install the typst compiler yourself and let it run in the cli

    typst watch file.typ // compiles automatically on file changes

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#75

Post by josephg »

tedggh wrote: post #58

Certainly not holding me back. I can go from crappy notes on a notepad to a polished and branded PDF release including TOC, tables, images and formulas, info/warning boxes, lists, code snippets with syntax highlighting, header/footer, etc in literally minutes. What else do you need?

What else?

I want figures. I want linked references. I want custom styling for images, and for blocks of text (eg warnings, notes, etc). I want a TOC and numbered chapters and sections. Sometimes I want a bibliography. Or a table generated from data within a JSON file.

You don't need this stuff for a readme file. But IMO markdown isn't powerful enough for blog posts, documentation or longer form content.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#76

Post by gethly »

Markdown is meant for less technically skilled users and cases where you just want to type something with a bit of structure and not bother with full html. Making universal claims of it being bad ignores the proper user cases for it. Author can write HTML as much as he wants, but don't tell the world that MD is bad.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#77

Post by tcfhgj »

tefkah wrote: post #36
nicoburns wrote: post #6

This article doesnt consider Typst, which IMO ought to be the first port of call if Markdown isnt sufficient for your needs.

typst is great, but there are many many steps between “markdown isn’t sufficient” and reaching for typst. 1. typst only really has pdf output at the moment 2. so much less tooling available (linters, site builders, converters etc) 3. much less of a markup format, extremely tightly coupled to a specific tool (typst compiler) again, love typst, but it has (atm) so much fewer applications

Typst has already experimental HTML output and it specifically has a markup mode (default mode).

Conceptually Typst is a superset of a Markdown with a slightly different syntax (e.g. = instead of # for headers)

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