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Markdown is holding you back

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Re: Markdown is holding you back

#41

Post by MillironX »

undeveloper wrote: post #15
jimmar wrote: post #5

Markdown is the minimum viable product. It’s easy to learn and still readable if not rendered in an alternate format. It’s great. For making PDFs, I’ve recently moved from AsciiDoc to Typst. I couldn’t find a good way to get AsciiDoc to make accessible PDFs, and I found myself struggling to control the output. Typst solves all of AsciiDoc’s problems for me. But in the end, no markup language will make you write bette…

typst looks interesting -- but how are you writing it? from what I looked at, it looks like theres an official web editor and a vscode plugin with limited support. this feels pretty limited, as someone who came in expecting something like obsidian.

I've started experimenting with Typst for a few documents, and here's my stack:

- Zed editor with Typst plugin

- Tinymist LSP settings turned on to render on save in Zed, see https://code.millironx.com/millironx/nix-dotfiles/src/commit...

- Okular open to the output document. Okular refreshes the document when changed on disk.

It's not as polished as say, LaTeX Workshop in VSCode, but it gets the job done.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#42

Post by ifh-hn »

I don't agree with this article. I mean sure there's no standard but there is pandoc, and quarto, both of which fill the gaps this article claims. And I also don't write content for LLMs so I don't care whether they can understand it.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#44

Post by ifh-hn »

WA wrote: post #32
dardeaup wrote: post #18

This is a timely topic for me. I'm just beginning the writing of a technical book. I plan to target epub/mobi. My research thus far has pointed to markdown -> html -> epub/mobi. If you were going to write a technical ebook would you use markdown or an alternative?

You need: - table of contents - automatic chapter and section numbering - cross references and automatic tracking of figures, tables etc. - different styles besides blockquotes such as info sections, warnings, tips Imho, cross-referencing chapters, pages, figures, tables and the lack thereof in Markdown is the first and most important thing to check how you would like this to be solved.

Pandoc and pandoc-crossref. Or simply use quarto.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#45

Post by random3 »

This is, personally, a controversial topic- I can take both sides of the debate in my head. I use markdown intensely and feel the deficiencies deeply, but wasn't able to see how there are real alternatives given the ecosystem (e.g. Obsidian).

I do think things are ripe for changes in this space.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#46

Post by somat »

The whole point of markdown, really it's whole value preposition is that it has nice looking plain text. And don't get me wrong that is a hell of a value to many people, myself included. Yes it is a terrible markup language, And I would encourage anyone doing serious document work to use a language that provides better semantic structure. But I would also argue that all projects that try to add these structures to markdown are missing the point and destroying it by making the plain text ugly.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#47

Post by ldng »

dardeaup wrote: post #18

This is a timely topic for me. I'm just beginning the writing of a technical book. I plan to target epub/mobi. My research thus far has pointed to markdown -> html -> epub/mobi. If you were going to write a technical ebook would you use markdown or an alternative?

How about markdown -> PDF (with Typst) -> epub/mobi ?

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#49

Post by throwaway150 »

dschuessler wrote: post #10

You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.[0] I am not aware of any Markdown tooling that does not support this. So, no, Markdown is not holding me back. It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't. [0]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html

> You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.

That is well known and I am sure the author is aware of it. The problem they are describing is not whether HTML is technically allowed inside Markdown. It's that when you are writing Markdown, you are writing Markdown, not HTML, and that comes with some problems.

> It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't.

In theory, yes. In practice, using Markdown becomes much less appealing once you start dropping raw HTML all over the place. The whole point of choosing Markdown is that you do not want to spend your time typing

, , and the rest. You want to write in Markdown, with only occasional HTML when absolutely necessary.

That is exactly where the author's complaints become relevant. If the solution to Markdown's limitations is routinely switching to HTML, then the argument becomes circular. If you are expected to write HTML to address the author's complaints, why bother with Markdown at all? If the answer is just "write HTML", then you may as well skip Markdown in the first place.

Re: Markdown is holding you back

#50

Post by alganet »

> Markdown Lacks the Structure You Need

The problem is, I always need more structure. Give me some YAML and time and I'll make hell (not a metaphor, I'll concoct hell itself on it).

Markdown keeps me honest.

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