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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)

#81

Post by stouset »

leoc wrote: post #76
johnchristopher wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's intended to be interpreted by computers, what's the point in avoiding precision? Because markdown is for humans first and foremost, not computers. It can't be clearer than that.

How could it be for humans any more or less than any other language which is designed primarily to be written by humans and then interpreted by computers?

Markdown is designed primarily for humans in both those tasks. Interpretability by computers is second to interpretability by people.

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

#82

Post by ars »

billpg wrote: post #69
JetSpiegel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are in fact programs that don't run in the browser. Schocking, I know. But wait, there's more! Some programs don't even use Javascript!

Your point?

His point is that your cute little text entry boxes with buttons don't work in those situations.

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

#83

Post by sebastianavina »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #62
jotux wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a reason it doesn't support tables I don't see how the inclusion of tables violates the ascii-like readability of markdown. Github has implemented a table syntax that is natural to read/write and makes it easy to include tables in your document. Example: https://github.com/Defconbots/2015_target/blob/master/hw/boa...

Natural to write? This: |Name |Quantity|Part Number |Distributor| |:--------------:|:------:|:------------------:|:---------:| |BAT1, BAT2, BAT3|3 |534-082 |Mouser | is not "natural to write"

of course is natural to write, given the proper emacs plugin.

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

#84

Post by aidenn0 »

buster wrote: post #37

This article is great. I really never understood the preference of Markdown over rST. Also, little do people know that github supports rst https://github.com/github/markup But looks like Creole as well, which i didn't know :)

As far as I can tell the only advantage rST has over markdown is that it's better defined. I rarely find that I prefer the rST syntax to markdown.

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

#85

Post by Turing_Machine »

krapp wrote: post #64
billpg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those text-entry boxes with buttons for emphasis, list items, etc.

Hacker News seems to have a weird fetish for its 'minimalist' UI ... probably because it has a higher than typical ratio of users who spend time behind a terminal, and due to some underlying belief that the lack of bells and whistles keeps the normies away. If they added a rich text editor there would probably be a riot. But to be fair, at least markdown is a lot cleaner than bbcode.

Or maybe people who write code for a living a) don't find it difficult to remember that fencing text with asterisks gives you italics and b) fencing text with asterisks is far, far faster than taking your hands off the keyboard and playing swoopy/pointy/clicky with a mouse.

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

#86

Post by Turing_Machine »

archagon wrote: post #79
1wd wrote: post #41

Yes, Markdown is really bad. I really wonder why it's so much more popular than Creole, Textile etc.

Revisit your starting assumption?

It looks like the famous Bjarne Stroustroup quote holds true for markup languages as well as programming languages.

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

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

#87

Post by krick »

sebastianavina wrote: post #83
JetSpiegel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural to write? This: |Name |Quantity|Part Number |Distributor| |:--------------:|:------:|:------------------:|:---------:| |BAT1, BAT2, BAT3|3 |534-082 |Mouser | is not "natural to write"

of course is natural to write, given the proper emacs plugin.

Yep, and there's also exists plugin like that for vim. Although it doesn't exactly comply to github's column alignment markup.

https://github.com/dhruvasagar/vim-table-mode

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

#88

Post by donniezazen »

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…

I am in a position where I know a little of Markdown and a little of reStructuredText. Considering the little time I have and I have to learn a language I would want to learn something that is extensible. Isn't that a valid reasoning?

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

#89

Post by donniezazen »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #45
josteink wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Org-mode is a beast. A fantastic beast, much like Emacs itself. You dive in, but there's always more to learn. Some things may be for you and some things don't. Everyone should give it a try. A little known fact, even among most org-users: Github can render org-mode files to HTML directly if checked into a repo, thus you can write your README files as org-files. Shameless example: https://github.com/josteink/csharp-m…

>Github can render org-mode files to HTML directly if checked into a repo They also support ASCIIDoc, ReST, MediaWiki markup, Creole, etc. See: https://github.com/github/markup

I really wish that other services would be like this. You enter text in a few popular markup languages and not one specific language.

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

#90

Post by k__ »

zimbatm wrote: post #51
cies wrote: post #22

Alternatives: asciidoc. Maps easily to docbook, and has a heap of extra features.

And it's also relatively close to markdown (biggest change is links). The asciidoctor project also has browser extensions for rendering which are really nice. For the lazy: http://asciidoctor.org/

Github can render asciidoc. Do they use asciidoctor.JS?

I found the lib was rather big :/

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