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1. This article is a bit too personal, 100% agree on that. 2. The best thing Gruber could do is pass on "ownership" of the project to someone else. He is unde

1. This article is a bit too personal, 100% agree on that. 2. The best thing Gruber could do is pass on "ownership" of the project to someone else. He is under no obligation to do so, but it seems like that would essentially solve the problem, while requiring almost no effort from him.

tptacek 17y ago
What's the "problem" here? The bugs Atwood is talking about are minor, and their solutions don't require drastic incompatible changes to Markdown-the-language. The issue here is that Gruber seems to be satisfied with Markdown-the-language, and Atwood (and many others) aren't. Obviously, Atwood could just create a new markup language derived from Markdown (like MultiMarkdown). But then he can't call it Markdown. He wants the best of both worlds, and he's not going to get it. And that's his problem, not ours.
- joeyh 17y ago
  The underscore bug sounds minor, but is not. The problem with this bug is you can start with something that works just as you would expect, like "HTTP_PROXY is a CGI variable". Now you go back and, edit the sentence: "HTTP_PROXY and REQUEST_METHOD are CGI variables". Suddenly, and in violation of Least Suprise, markdown spits out text that has a em tag between the two underscores. So, in practice, you have to remember to always escape underscores, so you start with. "HTTP\_PROXY is a CGI variable" and never run into the problem. Except now you have to keep this arbitrary rule in your head, and remember to do it all the time, and you end up with something that does not look like a plain text email; it's obviously marked up now. Which rather defeats the point of markdown.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    The change required to fix that glitch is so not drastic that many (most?) Markdown implementations have silently applied it already.
dasht 17y ago
Why should Gruber pass on "ownership" in the absence of a prospective owner who's work on the project he likes? What "problem" would be solved here other than the problem that Atwood is bad-mouthing Gruber, apparently to force him to pass on "ownership" or at least to make Gruber into a negative example for others? Isn't the better solution to that "problem" for the rest of the libre software community to disapprove of Atwood's defamatory statements about Gruber?

tptacek 17y ago

What's the "problem" here? The bugs Atwood is talking about are minor, and their solutions don't require drastic incompatible changes to Markdown-the-language. The issue here is that Gruber seems to be satisfied with Markdown-the-language, and Atwood (and many others) aren't. Obviously, Atwood could just create a new markup language derived from Markdown (like MultiMarkdown). But then he can't call it Markdown. He wants the best of both worlds, and he's not going to get it. And that's his problem, not ours.

joeyh 17y ago
The underscore bug sounds minor, but is not. The problem with this bug is you can start with something that works just as you would expect, like "HTTP_PROXY is a CGI variable". Now you go back and, edit the sentence: "HTTP_PROXY and REQUEST_METHOD are CGI variables". Suddenly, and in violation of Least Suprise, markdown spits out text that has a em tag between the two underscores. So, in practice, you have to remember to always escape underscores, so you start with. "HTTP\_PROXY is a CGI variable" and never run into the problem. Except now you have to keep this arbitrary rule in your head, and remember to do it all the time, and you end up with something that does not look like a plain text email; it's obviously marked up now. Which rather defeats the point of markdown.
- tptacek 17y ago
  The change required to fix that glitch is so not drastic that many (most?) Markdown implementations have silently applied it already.

dasht 17y ago

Why should Gruber pass on "ownership" in the absence of a prospective owner who's work on the project he likes? What "problem" would be solved here other than the problem that Atwood is bad-mouthing Gruber, apparently to force him to pass on "ownership" or at least to make Gruber into a negative example for others? Isn't the better solution to that "problem" for the rest of the libre software community to disapprove of Atwood's defamatory statements about Gruber?