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How Markdown took over the world

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Re: How Markdown took over the world

#261

Post by levmiseri »

hju22_-3 wrote: post #125
levmiseri wrote: post #74

> ...that it was too difficult or inconvenient to write out full HTML by hand It's not necessarily that writing HTML or other markup flavors is harder (obviously it is), but the beauty of Markdown for me is that it's perfectly readable in its raw form as well as with an applied styling. And speaking of customizing the 'look' of markdown, a shameless plug for a markdown editor I've been working on with extensive custo…

I've looked at your product before, but given that I can't self-host it and thus not control it, I think it's too vague on the security details. It does say some in the privacy policy, but there's no real details there. Given the potential sensitivity of personal notes, let alone work ones. Though, if that's no concern, I do think it looks good. So kudos in general. :) You planning to monetize it eventually?

Thanks! And fair enough, self-hosting isn't something we can easily do right now, but I can see why that would be a super valuable feature. For monetizaton – yes, we will soon have a 'pro' tier that will have more storage space for media.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#263

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ryang2718 wrote: post #141
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "better Emacs support," you're kind of understating things: Org Mode was -- and to a large degree, still is -- tied intimately to Emacs. It was only available in Emacs for years, and if you didn't use Emacs, you probably didn't hear about it for years. As someone who now uses both, I think the syntax between the two is really kind of a wash. I know Org Mode folks who insist that its syntax for links is m…

The key bindings out of the box with something like Doom emacsx is a big selling point too. I have not been able to get markdown to walk in Vim, anywhere near as well.

I don't remember Vim's Markdown support to be anything special, either; I do a lot of Markdown work, and tended to use Markdown-specific editors on the Mac like Ulysses and iA Writer, while doing my technical writing in BBEdit. (I never found Vim to fit me particularly well for prose of any kind, even though I was pretty experienced with it. Apparently my writing brain is not modal.)

Semi-ironically given the Org mode discussion, the markdown-mode package for Emacs makes it one of the best Markdown editors I've used!

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#264

Post by awesan »

Kwpolska wrote: post #253
awesan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened a bit differently; Atwood and friends simply came out with a standard document and called it "standard markdown", which Gruber then refused to endorse. Eventually after the series of blog posts and some back and forth they renamed the project "CommonMark", which it is still called today. I am not sure (of course), but I think Atwood simply thought standardizing this format was so obviously valuable that h…

The linked post contains three cases of Markdown syntax (underscores) leaking into the text, where actual italics were likely intended. This is the most basic Markdown syntax element failing to work. The problem CommonMark is trying to solve is not adding new features (the only one they added to Gruber Markdown is fenced code blocks), but rather specifying how to interpret edge cases to ensure the same Markdown code…

I understand the goal of the spec. In my experience once some spec document gets adapted widely enough, there's a strong incentive to add new features to it, which renderers would then be compelled to implement. Before you know it, MD is a complicated spec that doesn't serve its original purpose.

In this case a few minor edge cases is really not a big deal compared to that (in my opinion).

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#265

Post by wernsey »

rkp8000 wrote: post #57

I love Markdown. I'm a bit surprised, though, that you still can't open a .md file by default in most web browsers. It seems like it should be quite trivial to have the browser automatically convert it to html and display it.

I've taken to using Markdeep [1] for this.

You write your markdown file, but add the code snippet at the bottom of yor document and save it with a .md.html extension. Then when you double-click it it opens and renders in your browser.

I save my notes in a Google Drive, and it's now replaced all the note taking apps I've tried over the years

[1] https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#266

Post by TomMasz »

There's always room for a tool that does most of the things that people need to do, alongside far more complicated tools that do that plus a whole lot more. If all you want to do is maybe make some text bold or italic or have a bullet list, you can do it in Word, but it's way more than you need (plus it's not text), Markdown solves your problem, and if someone doesn't have a tool for viewing Markdown, it's still perfectly readable in a text editor.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#267

Post by dhosek »

duckmysick wrote: post #247
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t even see the code. I see a blonde, brunette, red head.

That made me think - are there any depictions of Markdown in movies and tv shows? I've seen a fair share of C, Java, HTML, and (in newer works) JavaScript and Python. And Perl in The Social Network. n.b.: the above quote is from The Matrix.

I think that was php in the social network.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#268

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

zdc1 wrote: post #201
duskdozer wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can, the gripe that I don't have a good solution for is what happens when entry 3 is a 7-letter name?

Then you need to re-pad everything (clean looking git diff be damned). It's just the reality of dealing with bounding boxes. Maybe we don't notice it in HTML and such since the browser redraws them for us for free.

A reasonable format would not insist you lay out tables visually any more than it would insist you center your headers if you'd like them horizontally centered when rendered. For instance, Asciidoctor has syntax for table cells that requires no whitespace and lets you put any content at all in a cell.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#269

Post by tasuki »

nvader wrote: post #100

I think there is another article waiting to be written, why ReStructured Text lost. I know that in my younger years I would get a lot of flak for converting .rst files into .md when I joined projects. (As I got older I just stopped seeing .rst that much)

> I know that in my younger years I would get a lot of flak for converting .rst files into .md when I joined projects.

Why would you do that? Seems terribly impolite to join a project and start breaking things...

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#270

Post by gregopet »

Both ASCIIdoc and reStructured text are older and better (subjective, of course), yet Markdown still won. Happens sometimes, nothing to see, I've moved on (with just a little grumbling). Now I often can't remember their syntaxes anymore, Markdown is everywhere.
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