Why are we still using Markdown? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#271

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

xigoi wrote: post #168

SoftTalker wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

troff was originally used to format printed output, where hyperlinks would not make any sense.

But you still have to use it for man pages, even though nobody prints man pages anymore.

A man page is simply a formatted text file. The display of it is performed by the program defined in the MANPAGER or PAGER environment variable, or by a default program, usually less(1). That is the program that would be responsible for navigating any hyperlinks, and the format of references to other pages is already pretty easy to pick out so developing a man page reader that could follow references to other man pages would not be particularly difficult. Many web-based and GUI man page viewers do this. Example: https://github.com/zigalenarcic/mangl

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#272

Post by mwkaufma » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

As the comment count in this thread increases, the ratio responding to the headline alone, and nothing in the article, is approaching 1.0.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#273

Post by arunbose » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

GandalfHN wrote: post #199

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.

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#274

Post by tcfhgj » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

amai wrote: post #214

GZGavinZhao wrote: post #195

As always, honorable mention to Typst [0] as a good balance between the readability & simplicity of Markdown with the flexibility & composability of LaTeX. I think and hoping that Typst will be the future, but for now I'm happy with Markdown. [0]: https://typst.app

From typst one cannot really create HTML, which makes typst unsuitable for online publishing.

https://typst.app/docs/web-app/export-and-preview/#html-prev...

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#275

Post by duxup » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

It's the inescapable truth that even after sitting down and engineering a magical solution ... sometimes just a basic CRUD function with just a couple bits added that doesn't have all the bells and whistles is what actually lasts when I write code and requires less maintenance.

There's the stuff that wows people and the stuff that people actually USE.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#276

Post by fg137 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

In a few years we'll all laugh at how ridiculous this blog post is.

If we are still using XML/YAML/JSON etc despite all their faults and shortcomings, Markdown can (and will) last decades.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#277

Post by fg137 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

Yokohiii wrote: post #141

jdefr89 wrote: post #115

A few things here. 1. Use a proper Markdown parser. The grammar is easy to define EBNF style most implementations I see now days use some recursive descent parser, etc… Regex implementation was used in original authors parser when it became popular. 2. You can resolve ambiguities and define more consistent symbols that make sense. Most markdown implementations are decent and follow common sense best practice syntax.…

I recently tried to create markdown like parser, I had to refer a lot to common marks. What I saw was madness. I never knew from casual use, that markdown is so complex. There is literally zero thought about parsing, it forces natural looking text into a format that can be structured into actual markup, but it has so many pitfalls and edge cases that it just feels wrong. Each time I've looked up another markdown pars…

> If you need an AST to parse something seemingly simple like markdown, then something went wrong.

This may surprise you, but that is very common in programming languages.

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#278

Post by bloppe » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #133

neonstatic wrote: post #119

This may be the first time my reaction to an objectively terrible programming language is a shrug and a "whatever". I like using markdown. I use it for journaling in Obsidian. It does everything I want it to. I like that it's just flat files. I don't want my journaling to be stuck in some online database. Yet, I am the same person who refuses to code in anything but Rust due to how not-awful it feels to me. Strange h…

> 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 only you could just put html tags in the markdown whenever you need a bit of extra expressivity!

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#279

Post by mcookly » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

karl42 wrote: post #198

https://djot.net/ seems to be very sane and still very similar to markdown. And after reading the CommonMark spec, I appreciate the saneness very much. CommonMark did a great job at describing all the rules and edge cases, but it clearly shows how messy markdown is. What do you all think of Djot?

Djot is great so far, and I'm eager to switch to it from Pandoc Markdown since editor support for Pandoc Markdown is lacking.

Looking at the repo's issues, I'm a bit concerned that it's already fragmented since some enthusiasts have implemented features far beyond, or against, Djot's spec. People seem impatient for v1.0...

Re: Why are we still using Markdown?

#280

Post by karl42 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

mcookly wrote: post #279

karl42 wrote: post #198

https://djot.net/ seems to be very sane and still very similar to markdown. And after reading the CommonMark spec, I appreciate the saneness very much. CommonMark did a great job at describing all the rules and edge cases, but it clearly shows how messy markdown is. What do you all think of Djot?

Djot is great so far, and I'm eager to switch to it from Pandoc Markdown since editor support for Pandoc Markdown is lacking. Looking at the repo's issues, I'm a bit concerned that it's already fragmented since some enthusiasts have implemented features far beyond, or against, Djot's spec. People seem impatient for v1.0...

Do you see a way to help and improve the situation?