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Why are we still using Markdown?

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Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#61

Post by vbezhenar »

Arainach wrote: post #27

Somewhat related past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41120254 Copying my thoughts from there which haven't changed: >To which I say, are you really going to avoid using a good tool just because it makes you puke? Because looking at it makes your stomach churn? Because it offends every fiber of your being?" Yes. A thousand times yes. Because the biggest advantage of Markdown is that it's easy to read…

HTML is valid markdown. So I'm not sure how you make oppose markdown and XML. XML is basically a subset of markdown.

    This is *valid*
    
    *Mark*
    _down_
Markdown basically adds a whole layer of complexity upon HTML.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#62

Post by Glyptodon »

I think markdown has problems, but this doesn't really propose a sane solution.

The need markdown solves is document formatting without needing to know or use a tag-based markup language and remaining easily human readable and editable.

That said, this is actually not the most widespread requirement. And when people need to solve this requirement, there often not tons of options. So some flavor of markdown is often the least problematic option.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#63

Post by Brendinooo »

When you look at wisdom principles, like those of the Solomonic kind, you observe that a proverb is profoundly true, wise, and useful when you first hear it, but it starts to feel less so when you subject it to intense scrutiny/deconstruction, or try to extrapolate it to places where it's not supposed to go.

Markdown is like that.

We use it because it's an incredibly human way of writing and reading data without having to wade too deeply into the various forms of overhead that allow machines to read, process, and display it.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#64

Post by xigoi »

mh- wrote: post #50
xigoi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Markdown produces a lot of unnecessary cognitive load compared to other markup languages. • I have to decide whether to use asterisks or underscores for bold and italic. • I have to decide whether to use asterisks, hyphen-minuses, or plus signs for unordered lists. • I have to remember all the various rules and edge cases about parsing.

> compared to other markup languages I think it would be easier for me to appreciate your comment if you named some of these other languages. Markdown is the only standardized one I regularly come across that I type by hand, these days. What are you contrasting to? As for Markdown specifically- the only thing I regularly mix up is the syntax for links. I frequently reverse the [] and (). But that's just because I don…

> I think it would be easier for me to appreciate your comment if you named some of these other languages.

HTML? Also my markup language I created for myself, which is currently not published.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#65

Post by xigoi »

chrisweekly wrote: post #33
xigoi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Markdown produces a lot of unnecessary cognitive load compared to other markup languages. • I have to decide whether to use asterisks or underscores for bold and italic. • I have to decide whether to use asterisks, hyphen-minuses, or plus signs for unordered lists. • I have to remember all the various rules and edge cases about parsing.

I suggest trying Obsidian for WYSIWYG markdown editing. It beats heck out of typing it raw and eliminates that cognitive load.

I don’t like WYSIWYG editing, as it makes the formatting invisible.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#66

Post by yawnxyz »

This sounds like all the arguments against using JSON/YAML as well.

People forget how important good UX can be, sometimes.

We're using Markdown, YAML, and JSON bc they're easy to use; they're "highly memetic" (easy to learn, easy to teach, easy to spread)

They don't require many months to learn like XML, back in the day

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#67

Post by singpolyma3 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #54
quelsolaar wrote: post #18

Mark down is great because it doesn't define a bunch of things. Headline? Its a headline, no font, no sizing, no colors... Just a headline. It means that it can be displayed on any device, printed on any paper, work with any accessibility tool and optimized for what ever requirements the reader has, not what ever the writer thought looked good. The web is full of great content being made hard to access because of poo…

> Its a headline, no font, no sizing, no colors... Just a headline. It means that it can be displayed on any device, printed on any paper, work with any accessibility tool and optimized for what ever requirements the reader has, not what ever the writer thought looked good. God, remember when that was that goal of HTML and the web? What a beautiful couple of years that was.

IMHO still is. Just don't add any JS or CSS

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#68

Post by Arainach »

vbezhenar wrote: post #61
Arainach wrote: post #27

Somewhat related past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41120254 Copying my thoughts from there which haven't changed: >To which I say, are you really going to avoid using a good tool just because it makes you puke? Because looking at it makes your stomach churn? Because it offends every fiber of your being?" Yes. A thousand times yes. Because the biggest advantage of Markdown is that it's easy to read…

HTML is valid markdown. So I'm not sure how you make oppose markdown and XML. XML is basically a subset of markdown. This is *valid* *Mark* _down_ Markdown basically adds a whole layer of complexity upon HTML.

If you're writing things like that in Markdown files (without being escaped in code blocks as HTML syntax examples), you're doing it wrong.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#69

Post by dbacar »

Markdown is for us humans. HTML is for machines.

Per keyboard stroke, you write much more content with MD than HTML.

Even without a specific browser/reader Markdown is relatively non-intrusive to read. You cant read HTML without an extra tool/effort to discard tags.

And you can parse MD with regular expressions, or can you? ;). (tip hat to infamous Stackoverflow discussion)

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#70

Post by singpolyma3 »

kennywinker wrote: post #10

Ambiguous means unclear meaning, not that there is more than one way to achieve the same thing. Html has that same problem. Think , , , etc. That’s life. Get used to it.

Those three are not the same thing though. They might render the same visually with the most popular visual user agents, but that's about it
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