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Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

quarkdown.com

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Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#71
post #5

I would really like to see a comparison of all these tools/markup languages: - MyST - Pandoc - Quarkdown - Quarto - Typst Quarto and pandoc both use Pandoc Markdown (and so does https://www.zettlr.com/ ). But Quarkdown and Typst offer programmable markup languages like LaTeX (or HTML + Javascript). It seems the winner for the title official LaTeX successor is still not decided.

I don't think Typst fits in this list. They never claim to be some sort of markdown or have any overlap with it, and their core product is the compiler, not the language. Just because they added some syntactic sugar that sometimes somewhat resembles markdown doesn't make it a competitor.

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#73
post #5

I would really like to see a comparison of all these tools/markup languages: - MyST - Pandoc - Quarkdown - Quarto - Typst Quarto and pandoc both use Pandoc Markdown (and so does https://www.zettlr.com/ ). But Quarkdown and Typst offer programmable markup languages like LaTeX (or HTML + Javascript). It seems the winner for the title official LaTeX successor is still not decided.

Pandoc lives in a different tier because it gives you arbitrary filters so you can do any transformation you want on the intermediate JSON format. And it converts anything to and from that JSON format. So I prefer Pandoc based systems because anything the tool doesn't do that you want is probably implementable with a simple inline filter.

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#74
post #71
post #5

I would really like to see a comparison of all these tools/markup languages: - MyST - Pandoc - Quarkdown - Quarto - Typst Quarto and pandoc both use Pandoc Markdown (and so does https://www.zettlr.com/ ). But Quarkdown and Typst offer programmable markup languages like LaTeX (or HTML + Javascript). It seems the winner for the title official LaTeX successor is still not decided.

I don't think Typst fits in this list. They never claim to be some sort of markdown or have any overlap with it, and their core product is the compiler, not the language. Just because they added some syntactic sugar that sometimes somewhat resembles markdown doesn't make it a competitor.

That "syntactic sugar" encompasses the entire value proposition of markdown, there's nothing stopping you using Typst to author blog posts or take notes, they even have HTML export.

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#75
post #50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it’s an upgrade of markdown, you should have called it "markup".

This sounds to me like it might benefit from some sort of "hypertext" functionality to allow for easy linking of documents

Now you're cooking with gas. Maybe it could be some sort of semantic markup language so we can separate and annotate things like titles, headers, links, and all of that stuff.

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#76
post #54
post #31

Quarkdown author and project lead here. I started Quarkdown as a uni research project and couldn't imagine what it would end up being 2 years later. Thanks for engaging! I'll try and respond to your comments.

Would you consider "fixing" the bold syntax on v3? I have always believed that instead of **bold** and *italic*, it should be *bold* and _italic_. That extra asterisk is a poor design decision in markdown. It really makes it inconvenient to edit Markdown on a phone or tablet.

Not planned, CommonMark compliance is a strong trait of Quarkdown's identity

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#77
post #31

Quarkdown author and project lead here. I started Quarkdown as a uni research project and couldn't imagine what it would end up being 2 years later. Thanks for engaging! I'll try and respond to your comments.

It strikes me as odd to add functions to a text format, given that even in GUI documents macros are usually avoided. Was Quarkdown designed for complex and repetitive documents? Thank you for volunteering to field questions.

Quarkdown was designed for control. Simple Markdown to define content, functions (LaTeX-style, but not macros!) for a declarative approach to document format and styling.

Scripting came out naturally, so why not. Since v2 QD comes with a permission system that makes things safer.

Re: Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

#78
post #46
post #31

Quarkdown author and project lead here. I started Quarkdown as a uni research project and couldn't imagine what it would end up being 2 years later. Thanks for engaging! I'll try and respond to your comments.

I read https://iamgio.eu/2025-12-10-accidentally-in-silicon-valley/ and it appears it worked out well – I'm happy for you!

Thank you! This project is giving me so much fulfillment
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