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How Markdown took over the world

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Re: How Markdown took over the world

#271

Post by rconti »

duskdozer wrote: post #188
mcny wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I don't understand Isn't this a table? |sn|name| |--|--| |1|George| |2|John| I feel like I've been doing this at least since about 2013? Edit: I get it now. It was not a part of the original spec. |sn|name | |--|------| | 1|George| | 2|John | It can look better if we use fixed width font and add padding I guess?

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

Honestly, updating tables in markdown has been my most successful use of AI :)

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#273

Post by c-smile »

Havoc wrote: post #56

Sound write-up. It is missing the #1 reason I like it though - it's fundamentally text. No format/vendor lock-in and very amenable to living in a git repo. For my note taking that's already game over right there against everything else. I don't want to worry about whatever cursed format OneNote uses is still something I can extract in 2035. I also like that it's become a defacto standard that LLMs speak. I can tell i…

WYSIWYG is #1 reason I believe.

Markdown is fundamentally WYSIWYG - you edit something and you get it rendered 1 to 1. Either in plain text (a.k.a. "source") or when it converted to HTML/CSS and then presented.

WYSIWYG requires 1:1 mapping between "source" and "presentation". Markdown is exactly that. While HTML/CSS is 1:N mapping - same presentation can be achieved with many combinations of HTML/CSS rules. That's why "true WYSIWYG" is barely achievable with HTML/CSS.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#274

Post by thaumasiotes »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #87
Havoc wrote: post #56

Sound write-up. It is missing the #1 reason I like it though - it's fundamentally text. No format/vendor lock-in and very amenable to living in a git repo. For my note taking that's already game over right there against everything else. I don't want to worry about whatever cursed format OneNote uses is still something I can extract in 2035. I also like that it's become a defacto standard that LLMs speak. I can tell i…

Except there's a massive lack of Markdown VIEWERS. You find MD files in every open-source project and lots of other places, but almost no viewers that render them as intended. So you wind up looking at them as plain text, with a bunch of formatting characters in them. What's the point, then? Only just now has Windows Notepad been revised to render Markdown (I think it does now, anyway). And after searching for a Mac…

> You find MD files in every open-source project and lots of other places, but almost no viewers that render them as intended.

Huh? If you find a markdown file in a project on Github, I have every confidence that it renders as intended in Github's markdown viewer.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#275

Post by binaryIsBetter »

zeppelin101 wrote: post #105
VerifiedReports wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there's a massive lack of Markdown VIEWERS. You find MD files in every open-source project and lots of other places, but almost no viewers that render them as intended. So you wind up looking at them as plain text, with a bunch of formatting characters in them. What's the point, then? Only just now has Windows Notepad been revised to render Markdown (I think it does now, anyway). And after searching for a Mac…

I'm personally a huge fan of Typora. It's available on Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Never heard of Typora before, but after looking it up it is an instant buy for me. Thanks for sharing!

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#276

Post by walterbell »

xigoi wrote: post #202
walterbell wrote: post #14

What's preventing browsers from rendering a common subset of markdown without the need for browser extensions, with fallback to the current default of plaintext if parsing fails? LLM output can be copy-pasted for rendering by chat messengers and notetaking apps (e.g. DevonThink). If LLM markdown output continues to proliferate, does it become the defacto common-by-volume subset of Markdown, which browsers could stand…

There is no such thing as a common subset of Markdown. Even basic things are rendered inconsistently by different implementations. If browsers decided to add Markdown support, this would lead to another “works only in Internet Explorer” situation.

> There is no such thing as a common subset of Markdown.

That was true before the widespread use of generative AI. LLM-generated markdown could _become_ the most common subset of Markdown, since machines can generate Markdown faster than humans.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#277

Post by thangalin »

tasuki wrote: post #223
Havoc wrote: post #56

Sound write-up. It is missing the #1 reason I like it though - it's fundamentally text. No format/vendor lock-in and very amenable to living in a git repo. For my note taking that's already game over right there against everything else. I don't want to worry about whatever cursed format OneNote uses is still something I can extract in 2035. I also like that it's become a defacto standard that LLMs speak. I can tell i…

> It is missing the #1 reason I like it though - it's fundamentally text. Sure, but that's table stakes. There are much better formats: AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, etc. Yet I also primarily use Markdown. I could use a format that's perhaps 20% better, and well-specified. But I'd have to use Markdown somewhere anyway. So I just stick with Markdown. It's good enough for me.

Can you quantify "much better"? I compiled a set of over 70 features offered by a variety of plain text formats:

https://keenwrite.com/blog/2025/09/08/feature-matrix/

Are many features missing from the list? From what I can tell, objectively, plain text formats offer largely equivalent functionality.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#278

Post by thelastgallon »

This reminds me of Adam Bosworth's talk on HTML (https://adambosworth.net/2004/11/18/iscoc04-talk/): It is an ironic truth that those who seek to create systems which most assume the perfectibility of humans end up building the systems which are most soul destroying and most rigid, systems that rot from within until like great creaking rotten oak trees they collapse on top of themselves leaving a sour smell and decay. We saw it happen in 1989 with the astonishing fall of the USSR. Conversely, those systems which best take into account the complex, frail, brilliance of human nature and build in flexibility, checks and balances, and tolerance tend to survive beyond all hopes.

Markdown is an 'improvement' over HTML, makes it even more flexible and tolerant and easier to write without using tags.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#279

Post by thangalin »

gregopet wrote: post #270

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.

I've posted my feature matrix elsewhere in this thread:

https://keenwrite.com/blog/2025/09/08/feature-matrix/

The matrix, which you can download, aims to provide an objective comparison. Any idea what features are missing, or can you qualify what makes the other text formats "better"? From my perspective, they are largely equivalent.

Re: How Markdown took over the world

#280

Post by thangalin »

janwillemb wrote: post #230

The writeup does not mention Jeff Atwood (Stackoverflow founder) trying to convince Gruber to standardize markdown. Atwood approached him publicly in a series of blog posts, but Gruber kept silent, and if I remember correctly finally declined stating that he didn't want to spend time jumping through other persons' hoops. Although it sucks that markdown is not standardized, I still see this as an inspiring example of…

> Although it sucks that markdown is not standardized

Does CommonMark count?

https://spec.commonmark.org/

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