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Why are we still using Markdown?

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Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#181

Post by registeredcorn »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #164
nickloewen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you want to use asterisks to mark footnotes.* As soon as you add a second footnote,** you're in trouble because your asterisks disappear and everything between them turns bold. * I had to escape all of these asterisks. ** I see this happen fairly often to people's comments here.

Disappearing asterisks is just terrible UX. It should turn bold but keep the asterisk displayed so you can still edit as normal. The bullet point problem is fixed by only bolding when the asterisks are on either end of word characters.

What ought, amn't

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#182

Post by Diti »

k__ wrote: post #47

Because there's only one reasonable implementation of AsciiDoc

Is that an issue? There’s only one reasonable implementation of Typst too, and both AsciiDoc and Typst are fully supported by Pandoc, which supports a wide selection of writers (output formats).

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#184

Post by nine_k »

xigoi wrote: post #169
nine_k wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markdown in an of itself isn’t powerful enough to satisfy the simple monkey brained developer like me who is only satisfied when the site looks good enough™. Well, indeed, Markdown is an inadequate tool for that. Let the author use more powerful tools, be it HTML, LaTeX, SVG, etc. Markdown is fine for its intended purpose: very light formatting, very simple header structure. If I were not that lazy, i would come up…

> If I were not that lazy, i would come up with something opposite to CommonMark, some MarkDownDown, that does away with alternative ways to format things, most escaping, and most advanced syntax. https://djot.net/

It makes quite a few right calls, but still tries to not be a strict subset of Markdown, requiring e.g. a different editing mode.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#185

Post by neonstatic »

edanm wrote: post #173
neonstatic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> worse is better It's a very old idea In the paper, Copernicus postulated the principle that "bad money drives out good", which later came to be referred to as Gresham's law after a later describer, Sir Thomas Gresham. This phenomenon had been noted earlier by Nicole Oresme, but Copernicus rediscovered it independently. Gresham's law is still known in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe as the Copernicus-Gresham L…

I'm not quite sure I understand the connection.

I see one, but then maybe I am just seeing things.

The wikipedia page about "worse is better" re: software linked above states:

  It refers to the argument that software quality does not necessarily increase with functionality: that there is a point where less functionality ("worse") is a preferable option ("better") in terms of practicality and usability.
Copernicus' idea about money has a similar structure - "better" money such as precious metals, art, etc. is being hoarded due to its perceived desirability, leading to more "worse" money in circulation. As a result, the "worse" money is actually "better" at fulfilling its role as currency (bc it's not hoarded). So there is also a point where "worse" becomes "better".

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#186

Post by guerrilla »

je42 wrote: post #180
nostrademons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth remembering that markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media. A > to indicate a quote was widespread Usenet convention. Asterisks or underscores to indicate emphasis was also a common convention; both are legal because both were common. Double asterisk or double underscores to indicate really, really emphasizing something was also a comm…

Writing mark down linter, i am i nterested in - if you think that you requirements for markdown formatting could be encoded in (relatively) simple rules?

Just search "Markdown grammar"

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#187

Post by GandalfHN »

xigoi wrote: post #26
otterley wrote: post #3

Because, like UNIX/Linux itself, worse is better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better - and perfect is the enemy of "good enough." We want to encourage people to produce written output with minimal friction. Barriers to writing--and especially barriers to producing documentation--should be minimized. Writing well is difficult enough! Markup is overhead. Complex markup is even more overhead. Markdown is the…

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.

[flagged]

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#188

Post by klez »

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…

> the only thing I regularly mix up is the syntax for links. I frequently reverse the [] and ()

I remember it as passing parameters to a function that requires an URL as an argument. Maybe it's not the most straightforward way, but it works for me

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#190

Post by danhau »

Pinus wrote: post #165
somat wrote: post #150

It is because the primary target for markdown is what would in any other formatting language be the source. Markdown has no source. It is guidelines for good looking plain text layout that when followed can be used to make a typeset document. Everybody sort of knows it sucks as a formatting language. But we love it anyway. The benefit of being able to get a typeset document from a nice looking plaintext document is j…

Unfortunately, the plain text does not look good, and does not offer good control of the typesetting. At least, nearly all markdown I see is almost unreadable in its “raw” state. I’d much rather read manually formatted, monospaced, text. That way, you can use asterisks as bullets, as footnote markers and as emphasis markers all at the same time, and anyone who is familiar with normal typographic conventions will unde…

+1

Not too long ago, I used to think that Markdown was the Bee‘s knees. But having been forced to write some documentation in plaintext, I learned that plaintext is significantly more readable than raw markdown.

I think one of Markdown‘s biggest sins is how it handles line breaks. Single line breaks being discarded in the output guarantees that your nicely formatted text will look worse when rendered. I understand there are use cases for this. But this and the „add a trailing space“ workaround are particularly terrible for code documentation.

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