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i use Markdown (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) regularly rather than directly writing HTML. like th

i use Markdown (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) regularly rather than directly writing HTML. like this thing, it's also just syntactic sugar, but it's well-designed and makes it so that i can concentrate on writing and not on formatting syntax. my raw text files are much more source-control friendly, since the diffs are clean.

silentbicycle 17y ago
Markdown is different, though. Rather than trying to cram HTML into a yet another pseudo-programming syntax, it tries to generate HTML that matches common plaintext-formatting conventions. You might not guess Markdown-formatted text was written with a formal markup language in mind. FWIW, there's a C implementation of Markdown called "discount" (http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/ http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/) which is crazy fast, easy to embed, and has a couple nice extensions. (Also, "SHPAML"? Gross.)
- showell 17y ago
  First of all, sorry about the name. SHPAML is not a pseudo-programming syntax. It is purely a markup language, so there are no programming constructs. SHPAML very deliberately tries to be a lightweight abstraction on top of HTML, unlike wikis and Markdown, which operate at a higher level abstraction. I am a huge fan of wikis, so I value the higher level abstraction at times, but I also see the need for an in-between solution. I have not used Markdown much, but I see its merits as well.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    That came off more harsh than intended. It sucks to post something you're excited about and have lots of people digging into it. I'm not being critical of your tool in particular so much as wary of the flock of thin syntax transformers that have come out lately. They're fun projects, but adding yet another mutually incompatible data format is probably only a net gain under relatively specific circumstances (small teams, for starters). I like Markdown in this regard because it's downwardly compatible with how people would write anyway. You're right that it's at a different level of abstraction, though. And about the name - I'm really tired of hearing the same Monty Python jokes all the time, but that's my problem.
    - showell 17y ago
      I understand the objection to having too many mutually incompatible data formats, but I don't understand how Markdown is exempt from that concern. It achieves the goal of looking like what "people would write anyway," but at a higher cost in terms of departing from HTML semantics. For example, how do you indicate semantic structure via Markdown to allow for CSS styling or Javascript manipulation of the DOM?

silentbicycle 17y ago

Markdown is different, though. Rather than trying to cram HTML into a yet another pseudo-programming syntax, it tries to generate HTML that matches common plaintext-formatting conventions. You might not guess Markdown-formatted text was written with a formal markup language in mind. FWIW, there's a C implementation of Markdown called "discount" (http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/ http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/) which is crazy fast, easy to embed, and has a couple nice extensions. (Also, "SHPAML"? Gross.)

showell 17y ago
First of all, sorry about the name. SHPAML is not a pseudo-programming syntax. It is purely a markup language, so there are no programming constructs. SHPAML very deliberately tries to be a lightweight abstraction on top of HTML, unlike wikis and Markdown, which operate at a higher level abstraction. I am a huge fan of wikis, so I value the higher level abstraction at times, but I also see the need for an in-between solution. I have not used Markdown much, but I see its merits as well.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  That came off more harsh than intended. It sucks to post something you're excited about and have lots of people digging into it. I'm not being critical of your tool in particular so much as wary of the flock of thin syntax transformers that have come out lately. They're fun projects, but adding yet another mutually incompatible data format is probably only a net gain under relatively specific circumstances (small teams, for starters). I like Markdown in this regard because it's downwardly compatible with how people would write anyway. You're right that it's at a different level of abstraction, though. And about the name - I'm really tired of hearing the same Monty Python jokes all the time, but that's my problem.
  - showell 17y ago
    I understand the objection to having too many mutually incompatible data formats, but I don't understand how Markdown is exempt from that concern. It achieves the goal of looking like what "people would write anyway," but at a higher cost in terms of departing from HTML semantics. For example, how do you indicate semantic structure via Markdown to allow for CSS styling or Javascript manipulation of the DOM?