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Beyond Markdown (2018)

johnmacfarlane.net

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Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#71

Post by eterevsky »

sqs wrote: post #2

I understand where the author is coming from and respect their contributions to Commonmark. But... There are tons of markup languages for prose that have well-defined specs. So, why did Markdown win? IMO, because it does not have a well-defined spec. It is highly tolerant of formatting errors, inconsistencies, etc. If an author makes a mistake when writing Markdown, you can always look at it in plain text. Whereas a…

It is true that Markdown won by putting simplicity for the users in front of simplicity for the parsers. But since it became ubiquitous, there's a lot of value in codifying the standard to make sure that it doesn't diverge into different dialects.

Regarding the specific author's suggestions, he explicitly writes that he doesn't propose to implement them in the actual MD "standard", since backwards compatibility is more important. That said there is value in making the markup less ambiguous while preserving the "writability" even if it's just a thought experiment.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#73

Post by sigg3 »

teddyh wrote: post #56
s1mon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underlining is an emphasis hack for mechanical typewriters or in handwriting. There's no reason to use it typographically in something which has all the layout possibilities of a modern computer or printer. https://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html

Except to indicate something new and modern which needs its own visual distinction… like hyperlinks . Using underlining as the default for hyperlinks was genius.

Purely anecdotal but I always waste a second clicking something I believed was a link because it was underlined.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#74

Post by crabbone »

sqs wrote: post #2

I understand where the author is coming from and respect their contributions to Commonmark. But... There are tons of markup languages for prose that have well-defined specs. So, why did Markdown win? IMO, because it does not have a well-defined spec. It is highly tolerant of formatting errors, inconsistencies, etc. If an author makes a mistake when writing Markdown, you can always look at it in plain text. Whereas a…

These things don't win on engineering merits. Markdown wasn't better than others. It was like a bunch of others. It's just natural that one form of communication becomes a monopoly because people want to be able to talk to as many people as possible.

You only need to be good enough to enter this kind of competition... and win. The reasons you might win can be many arbitrary things, like someone deciding to adopt a practice in a large organization, or dedicating efforts to writing parsers in many languages etc.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#75

Post by lelanthran »

s1mon wrote: post #45
SoftTalker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see *this is bold* /this is italics/ _this is underlined_ Beyond simple conventions like this, I'd just as soon drop into HTML as deal with some other markup that ends up being just as complex. We don't need to allow permutations and combinations such as bold and italics, double-weight bold, etc. these never occur in normal prose typesetting and if you need it just use HTML for those rare cases.

Underlining is an emphasis hack for mechanical typewriters or in handwriting. There's no reason to use it typographically in something which has all the layout possibilities of a modern computer or printer. https://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html

> Underlining is an emphasis hack for mechanical typewriters or in handwriting. There's no reason to use it typographically in something which has all the layout possibilities of a modern computer or printer.

The argument presented by that link is valid for paragraphs and valid for printed content.

On a website, underlining single words or short phrases doesn't make them less unreadable, it draws attention to them.

Like with hyperlinks; the displayed form of `[See here](http://here.com) for more inform` is undeniably better than simply `see here for more info` and leave the reader guessing which of those words is the text and which is a hyperlink.

The problem is exacerbated on mobile where the reader cannot hover a mouse over the words to determine which words are a link and which are not.

If you're writing a full paragraph like this:

"Our previous stories of FooBarFactory Inc were well-received by our readers. Investigative Journalism has always been a core principle of PotatoNews. The images and video that our beloved readers shared on Twitter are only a single component in the fight against big corps polluting our environment."

In the above paragraph, "previous stories" is a link, "FooBarFactory" is a link, "well-received" is a link, "images and video" is a link, "Twitter" is a link and "Polluting out environment" is a link.

The advice from Practical Typography would render that entire paragraph free of any indication that there's more for the user to read.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#76

Post by hinkley »

I have been trying to research my way out of having to write a markdown parser that doesn't allow inline html because I don't want to be a markdown author, but I categorically don't want people being able to inject things into the wiki(s) I need to create. In some languages it's a flag. In others, there's no flag.

This is like not using bind variables on your sql library. I just don't understand it. I'm looking at you, Crockford.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#78

Post by hinkley »

noizejoy wrote: post #6
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #5

Weird that he did not reference the djot package[0] which seems like his attempt at implementing this thesis. [0] https://djot.net/

Maybe because OP is from 2018?

There is something to be said for, not editing your old posts, but applying a preface that references later iterations on the idea. I wish I were better about that myself.

"In this article from 2017, I talk about dinglehoppers, which have since been improved by research from these three papers [1][2][3]. Here is where I revisit this topic in 2021."

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#79

Post by hinkley »

prepend wrote: post #17

I write a lot of markdown. Ive taught lots of people to use it. I’ve never encountered these problems. Markdown is meant to be simple. To represent complex things, use something else. I don’t think I’ll ever use this and if someone tries to make me learn this instead of regular markdown, I’ll probably just not bother. I don’t want to diminish anyone’s creativity, but this seems like a lot of work put into something u…

My thought is to represent complex things, use better prose or diagrams. Though José and some of his friends are warming me up to interactive tools. Livebook has some stuff I need to look at more. Currently mostly targeted at developers, of course.

Re: Beyond Markdown (2018)

#80

Post by yaantc »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
qingcharles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like your proposal, but in the days of USENET the // wasn't interpreted by the machine but simply by our minds, just like * for bold. Would there be any extra issues caused by italics being / rather than *? I'm honestly with you on this and I'm in the middle of building a huge Markdown site where I have the freedom to change the syntax now if I want.

I'd like to see *this is bold* /this is italics/ _this is underlined_ Beyond simple conventions like this, I'd just as soon drop into HTML as deal with some other markup that ends up being just as complex. We don't need to allow permutations and combinations such as bold and italics, double-weight bold, etc. these never occur in normal prose typesetting and if you need it just use HTML for those rare cases.

This is what Org mode does. It's still very tied to Emacs, but there's an effort to standardize the Org format. Hopefully this will help its adoption outside of Emacs, it's a nice markup (and a lot more).
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