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Why are we still using Markdown?

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Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#251

Post by roblh »

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.

For the love of god, yes. Slack is the worst for this with backticks. Editing the start/end points is a giant pain.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#252

Post by grumbel »

BeetleB wrote: post #24

All problems are solved once you embrace org-mode. All you need is Emacs! Nothing more!

One big thing I still miss with org-mode are explicit section endings. Just as with markdown you only have headings, the end of a section is implicit. This often leads to text getting swallowed up by the last chapter and makes any kind of restructuring fragile. HTML's makes things much easier.

Having explicit header levels (similar to HTML's ) is another annoyance, as that makes inclusion of one org document into another problematic and requires restructuring (somewhat workaroundable with "#+begin_src org").

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#253

Post by deknos »

i would not use html(5). XHTML? perhaps. but try to find 3 parsers, which parse html in the same way and not segfaulting.

It's not possible. HTML is worse. You need at least something, which on parsing does not segfault.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#254

Post by Analemma_ »

throw0101c wrote: post #232
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…

> 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! What about something like AsciiDoc (or reStructuredText)? * https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/asciidoc-vs-mar... * "Markdown, Asciidoc, or reStructuredText – a tale of docs-as-code": https://news.ycombi…

The problem is that proposed Markdown alternatives are targeting a vanishingly small niche of scenarios: for almost all simple writing Markdown is good enough, and for anything too complicated for Markdown, people will use HTML or LaTeX/Typst. The in-betweens just don't seem to have a reason to exist.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#257

Post by _bernd »

beautron wrote: post #152
reaperducer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media For those of you who weren't there: *bold* _underline_ ~strikethrough~ /italics/ > Quotation - list - list - list I've been using these for almost half a century. They're much easier and more intuitive than Markdown. I see no compelling reason to change.

One problem with the /italics/ form is that it's not convenient when writing about filesystem paths (though I do like its visual indication of slanting).

A path should be written `/root`...

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#258

Post by BeetleB »

grumbel wrote: post #252
BeetleB wrote: post #24

All problems are solved once you embrace org-mode. All you need is Emacs! Nothing more!

One big thing I still miss with org-mode are explicit section endings. Just as with markdown you only have headings, the end of a section is implicit. This often leads to text getting swallowed up by the last chapter and makes any kind of restructuring fragile. HTML's makes things much easier. Having explicit header levels (similar to HTML's ) is another annoyance, as that makes inclusion of one org document into ano…

> as that makes inclusion of one org document into another problematic and requires restructuring (somewhat workaroundable with "#+begin_src org").

Outside of Emacs, yes. Within Emacs, there's a keybinding to paste a tree and have it fit.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#259

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #52
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…

markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media For those of you who weren't there: *bold* _underline_ ~strikethrough~ /italics/ > Quotation - list - list - list I've been using these for almost half a century. They're much easier and more intuitive than Markdown. I see no compelling reason to change.

[deleted]

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#260

Post by bnjms »

beautron wrote: post #152
reaperducer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

markdown tried very hard to encode conventions that were already used in Usenet, email, and other text media For those of you who weren't there: *bold* _underline_ ~strikethrough~ /italics/ > Quotation - list - list - list I've been using these for almost half a century. They're much easier and more intuitive than Markdown. I see no compelling reason to change.

One problem with the /italics/ form is that it's not convenient when writing about filesystem paths (though I do like its visual indication of slanting).

I agree that file paths should be in `backticks`.

Or italics can be //double slash// to avoid ambiguities with file paths. That still leaves the windows style //some/file/path as ambiguous But I’ll never accept single * as natural for italics.

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