I added Markdown support to Google Docs as a 20% project. Honestly honored to be included in this Markdown history :)
Hanging your jersey from the rafters in the Plain Text Arena. A bullpen of weary cubicle-dwellers salutes you!
How Markdown took over the world
311–320 of 353 posts
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#312Markdown took over because GitHub decided it should, instead of picking ASCIIDoc which is a better format, has a standard, and is literally used by the git documentation itself.
I argee. Up until now, the most PITA for me in Markdown is the table syntax. Even CommonMark does not have any spec for table except for long running discussions with lots of proposals.
AsciiDoc(tor) has a nice support for tables. It also supports more complex features like merged cells, span cols and all but the syntax suffers from there. I guess that is also why AsciiDoc was not widely adopted.
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#313Markdown is very easy to use and comfortable to edit, making the text very readable. I still remember the feeling when I first switched from Word documents to writing documents with Markdown; it was amazing.
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#314Markdown is very easy to use and comfortable to edit, making the text very readable. I still remember the feeling when I first switched from Word documents to writing documents with Markdown; it was amazing.
I am glad markdown is very reliable to you (and many people), and if you’re just talking about something with very light, formatting, then it can be. However, link have documents can be incredibly hard to read. I am dyslexic. I find markdown documents, markedly worse for me. All I’m saying is that we can’t universalize this experience
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I was griping above, you usually can't just view a Markdown file with formatting applied at all. I think MAYBE Notepad has been updated just recently to render it, but otherwise... you're looking at plain text with a bunch of formatting characters in it. Why? It's baffling. Where are the simple Markdown READERS?
Your plain text editor is the markdown reader. That’s the point.
Then that's no point at all. You're not seeing the formatting that the embedded formatting characters call for, so why have them in there?
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your plain text editor is the markdown reader. That’s the point.
and it looks like poo, that’s the other point
Exactly. You can always count on someone to come back with, "That's why it's so great! You just read it in a plain-text editor!"
Why does anyone have to point out how dumb it is to litter your "plain text" file with formatting characters that are never respected?
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#317Earlier 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…
There's loads of markdown viewers, you just don't identify them as that. Try copying some markdown into these places: - A reddit comment - Microsoft Teams - Slack - Whatsapp - Discord - Google Docs - Discord - Notion - Facebook Messenger (although only on desktop I think) Etc.
Hahaha, I know, right? Someone might seriously float this argument.
Gee, here's a Markdown file on my computer that I'd like to read (formatted as intended). Since I don't have a lightweight reader for Markdown, let me just...
1. Open it up in a text editor
2. Launch a browser
3. Navigate to some page that allows Markdown comments.
4. Log in to comment.
5. Find something to comment on.
6. Create and paste into a comment.
7. Post the comment.
8. Read.
SO EASY!
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's loads of markdown viewers, you just don't identify them as that. Try copying some markdown into these places: - A reddit comment - Microsoft Teams - Slack - Whatsapp - Discord - Google Docs - Discord - Notion - Facebook Messenger (although only on desktop I think) Etc.
Most repo browser UIs, and apps like VSCode, too.
Again, the point is not to launch an EDITOR and then open up a "preview." The point is to double-click and start reading the document as formatted. You know... like we can do with even the maligned PDF.
Think about the word "preview." If you're "previewing" the Markdown file, what are you previewing its appearance in?
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's loads of markdown viewers, you just don't identify them as that. Try copying some markdown into these places: - A reddit comment - Microsoft Teams - Slack - Whatsapp - Discord - Google Docs - Discord - Notion - Facebook Messenger (although only on desktop I think) Etc.
And BBEdit
Still an editor, not a reader. The point is not to have to launch an editor and then "preview" a file you're just trying to read.
Re: How Markdown took over the world
#320Earlier 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…
That is the point, markdown has nice looking plain text, It is a terrible formatting language, it has no semantic ability. The whole point of markdown is that it is nice looking plaintext that can be typeset. I would even go so far to say that the intended primary render of markdown is the plaintext This is why I don't like proposals to make markdown a better markup language, I understand the intent, markdown sucks a…
It's NOT nice-looking plain text. It's text littered with a bunch of formatting characters that aren't respected by any lightweight viewer. So why have them in there?
I'm not proposing to make it a better markup language. I just want to VIEW it with the formatting that it calls for.
It's mystifying that people are actually opposed to this. It's like a massive psychology-class experiment, when a bunch of confederates champion an obviously-absurd point of view to see if the subject of the experiment will hold his ground.