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Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

wilfred.me.uk

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Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#31

Post by lucb1e »

Since getting ReText, a simple Markdown editor which can export to PDF, ODT and HTML, I notice I want to make many documents in it instead of using LibreOffice. As long as it doesn't need imagery but just normal text with formatting (chapters, bullet points, perhaps code examples, etc.), it's much easier to create and keep in version control. It's super light, in a text-based format no program will ever have issues with (try the "open" docx format in LibreOffice) and when sending it to others I just attach a pdf export.

Markdown as a spec may not be nailed down 100%, but as a practical thing to use it's very handy. There are implementation differences between StackOverflow and ReText, but those are details.

Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#32

Post by stdbrouw »

ams6110 wrote: post #8

I don't like any of them. Markdown, ReST, various wiki/forum dialects of "simplified" text formatting. They are all as complicated if not more complicated than just writing HTML. They all have a bunch of rules and special cases. I'd rather just write in HTML which I already know. I don't understand the motivation for any of these "alternative" markup formats. Normal non-technical people want Word (or at least, some k…

~10 years ago I introduced Textile markup at our student newspaper and they're still using it. Nobody complains about it. Some people write in Word first and then add the tags, but most writers just use the tags right away.

You're free to argue that these markup languages all suck, but this idea that it's impossible to get "normal people" to learn even a little bit of syntax, is preposterous – what about twitter #hashtags and @replies?

Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#35

Post by canadev »

cespare wrote: post #13
ams6110 wrote: post #8

I don't like any of them. Markdown, ReST, various wiki/forum dialects of "simplified" text formatting. They are all as complicated if not more complicated than just writing HTML. They all have a bunch of rules and special cases. I'd rather just write in HTML which I already know. I don't understand the motivation for any of these "alternative" markup formats. Normal non-technical people want Word (or at least, some k…

> They are all as complicated if not more complicated than just writing HTML. They all have a bunch of rules and special cases. I'd rather just write in HTML which I already know. I find that Markdown is significantly easier/faster to write than HTML and, more importantly, easier to read in its un-rendered form. To me (and presumably lots of other people, given Markdown's ubiquity) it's well worth learning the relati…

I haven't seen it used outside of Rails apps, but have you ever tried Slim? I understand there's a similar tool for Node.js called Jade.

http://slim-lang.com/

  table
    tr
      th Col1 Header!
      th Col2 Header!
    tr
      td Col1 Value...
      td Col2 Value...
Renders to HTML.

Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#36

Post by baddox »

breuleux wrote: post #29
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

org-mode tables are great, but they're only easy to type because org-mode does the dynamic resizing and border drawing for you. Markdown is supposed to be simple to type in any plain text editor.

You can still have simpler table syntax that's nice to read but easier to maintain. For my own markup language ( http://breuleux.net/quaint_demo/ ) I implemented this syntax: + Name + Occupation | Alice | Accountant | Bob | Baker | Charles | Car salesman Headers are easier to make and the last column does not require a trailing marker. It's still some work to align columns other than the last, but that's not a requir…

Yeah, the alignment of columns is a big issue. If you have 100 rows, and add another with a cell that is longer than any other cell in that column, you've got to either edit 100 rows or live with a much harder to read table.

Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#39

Post by baddox »

sitharus wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #3

Part of the problem is that people don't really grok the point of Markdown. There's a reason it doesn't support tables, or a syntax for making the kind of language used in a code snippet. The point of Markdown is to mimic the conventions of ASCII-text email, both to make writing it as natural as possible, and to make Markdown pleasant to read in both ASCII and HTML. If you want something more featureful than Markdown…

To add to that, Markdown was created to scratch one person's itch with no real desire to support a wider community. It was put online and other people liked it and modified it, but the original site doesn't have any of this.

Is that a correct history of Markdown? It certainly seems to have been designed to be easily readable and writable for laypeople.

Re: Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language (2012)

#40

Post by LukeShu »

pmoriarty wrote: post #27
tedunangst wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when I add a new value that's "much longer"?

At first, |-----+-------| | Key | Value | |-----+-------| | 00 | foo | | 01 | bar | |-----+-------| becomes |-----+-------| | Key | Value | |-----+-------| | 00 | foo | | 01 | bar | | 02 | much longer | |-----+-------| but as soon as I hit TAB, it turns in to: |-----+-------------| | Key | Value | |-----+-------------| | 00 | foo | | 01 | bar | | 02 | much longer | |-----+-------------| There's probably a way to make…

M-q also resizes the table; I mention this because M-q is universally "reflow whatever is under my cursor."
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