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Isn't that comparison unfair, given that AsciiDoc gives you more functionality in a curated whole? Nobody forces you do use all of them. If you just want to us

by vog 9y ago

Isn't that comparison unfair, given that AsciiDoc gives you more functionality in a curated whole? Nobody forces you do use all of them. If you just want to use AsciiDoc as "Markdown with more coherent syntax", stick to a small subset that is equally trivial to learn. And if you need more, AsciiDoc's comprehensive user guide is a huge advantage. In Markdown, you'll have to look around for all kinds of forks. And god forbid if you want to use two additional features that were not designed to work together in the first place. Compare this with AsciiDoc's clear extension system where you can hook up everything and it won't interfere with each other.

kbenson 9y ago
> Isn't that comparison unfair, given that AsciiDoc gives you more functionality in a curated whole? I don't see how it's unfair. I think AsciiDoc is much more complex, by just about any metric you want to use. I'm not saying it's necessarily worse by many metrics, just that by the particular metric of getting average people to use it, and not just a random subset of it, Markdown's simplicity is beneficial. > Nobody forces you do use all of them. No, but for random internet user there's a real trade-off between what you're trying to accomplish and what it takes to accomplish it, when you're just trying to write a simple comment. Reddit has a link that says "formatting help" below the comment box, and when you click it, it shows every option you have for special formatting with examples in a table with nine rows and two columns, including the header. They could have chosen AsciiDoc, but then they would have to make a decision about what features to elevate to the quick help and which not to, and very possibly which to disallow for their use case. Markdown is simple for users to use, simple for user to understand, simple for developers to implement, and simple for developers to decide about. That simplicity is both why it was adopted by developers and why users bothered to learn and use it. As I alluded to before, AsciiDoc may have been a better choice in the end, but I don't think it's quite as simple as AsciiDoc does more stuff, so it's better. It's all about the trade-offs, and there's been plenty of discussion on that[1] before, from both sides. 1: Just google "worse is better".
- accordionclown 9y ago
  gruber's original markdown is "simple" because it's brain-dead. which is why so many people had to "extend" it with different "flavors", which has now created a massive mess of inconsistencies. sometimes worse is better. and sometimes it's just plain worse. and sometimes it's the worst kind of situation you could ever imagine.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    There's a difference between something that's not good and something that just doesn't go far enough for your needs. If it were that brain-dead it wouldn't be extended, it would be replaced.
    - accordionclown 9y ago
      gruber's brain-dead version _has_ been replaced. by better versions. the problem is these "better versions" are all inconsistent with each other. and each of them has an installed base which insists that the egg be cracked on their preferred end. if instead of adopting markdown, people would have extracted a small subset of asciidoc (which predated markdown) or restructured-text (which also predated markdown) to serve the brain-dead use-cases that markdown claimed, those subsets would've been just as "simple" to learn, but also leveraged more cleanly when people sought to extend the light-markup toolkit to longer-form documents. but the blogosphere thought it was hot shit back then, and took great delight in pushing things viral. ergo markdown. so now we're stuck in a bad situation.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        > gruber's brain-dead version _has_ been replaced. by better versions. the problem is these "better versions" are all inconsistent with each other. They are all mostly consistent with the core markdown. They are inconsistent in their extensions. Markdown itself does have problems in that there was no formal spec, but that's mostly been resolved with CommonMark[1]. They even go so far as to document the different extensions that have been developed with their different syntaxes[2]. You might be tempted to call CommonMark a replacement, but it's not, it's really just a formalization of a spec based on Markdown.pl the the test suite that resolved some ambiguities. > if instead of adopting markdown, people would have extracted a small subset of asciidoc (which predated markdown) or restructured-text (which also predated markdown) In that case, why not Setext, which is from 1991? I'll tell you why, because Markdown was meant to codify already in use norms, and to emphasize readability over all else: Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. To this end, Markdown’s syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look like emphasis. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you’ve ever used email. - Markdown Syntax "Daring Fireball – Markdown – Syntax. 2013-06-13.[3] > those subsets would've been just as "simple" to learn I think not. For some, including me, markdown was almost zero-cost. It's how I wrote email. > but the blogosphere thought it was hot shit back then, and took great delight in pushing things viral. ergo markdown. I think that's highly simplistic, and ignores the realities. One of which is that it was pushed on Reddit, which has become one of the largest and most used sites on the internet. I find it hard to believe the blogospere opining on it (because it's not actually used on all that many blogs) has had more sway than them on this topic. 1: http://commonmark.org http://commonmark.org 2: https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/wiki/Deployed-Extensions https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/wiki/Deployed-Extensions 3: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosophy http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosoph...

by vog 9y ago

kbenson 9y ago

> Isn't that comparison unfair, given that AsciiDoc gives you more functionality in a curated whole? I don't see how it's unfair. I think AsciiDoc is much more complex, by just about any metric you want to use. I'm not saying it's necessarily worse by many metrics, just that by the particular metric of getting average people to use it, and not just a random subset of it, Markdown's simplicity is beneficial. > Nobody forces you do use all of them. No, but for random internet user there's a real trade-off between what you're trying to accomplish and what it takes to accomplish it, when you're just trying to write a simple comment. Reddit has a link that says "formatting help" below the comment box, and when you click it, it shows every option you have for special formatting with examples in a table with nine rows and two columns, including the header. They could have chosen AsciiDoc, but then they would have to make a decision about what features to elevate to the quick help and which not to, and very possibly which to disallow for their use case. Markdown is simple for users to use, simple for user to understand, simple for developers to implement, and simple for developers to decide about. That simplicity is both why it was adopted by developers and why users bothered to learn and use it. As I alluded to before, AsciiDoc may have been a better choice in the end, but I don't think it's quite as simple as AsciiDoc does more stuff, so it's better. It's all about the trade-offs, and there's been plenty of discussion on that[1] before, from both sides. 1: Just google "worse is better".

accordionclown 9y ago
gruber's original markdown is "simple" because it's brain-dead. which is why so many people had to "extend" it with different "flavors", which has now created a massive mess of inconsistencies. sometimes worse is better. and sometimes it's just plain worse. and sometimes it's the worst kind of situation you could ever imagine.
- kbenson 9y ago
  There's a difference between something that's not good and something that just doesn't go far enough for your needs. If it were that brain-dead it wouldn't be extended, it would be replaced.
  - accordionclown 9y ago
    gruber's brain-dead version _has_ been replaced. by better versions. the problem is these "better versions" are all inconsistent with each other. and each of them has an installed base which insists that the egg be cracked on their preferred end. if instead of adopting markdown, people would have extracted a small subset of asciidoc (which predated markdown) or restructured-text (which also predated markdown) to serve the brain-dead use-cases that markdown claimed, those subsets would've been just as "simple" to learn, but also leveraged more cleanly when people sought to extend the light-markup toolkit to longer-form documents. but the blogosphere thought it was hot shit back then, and took great delight in pushing things viral. ergo markdown. so now we're stuck in a bad situation.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      > gruber's brain-dead version _has_ been replaced. by better versions. the problem is these "better versions" are all inconsistent with each other. They are all mostly consistent with the core markdown. They are inconsistent in their extensions. Markdown itself does have problems in that there was no formal spec, but that's mostly been resolved with CommonMark[1]. They even go so far as to document the different extensions that have been developed with their different syntaxes[2]. You might be tempted to call CommonMark a replacement, but it's not, it's really just a formalization of a spec based on Markdown.pl the the test suite that resolved some ambiguities. > if instead of adopting markdown, people would have extracted a small subset of asciidoc (which predated markdown) or restructured-text (which also predated markdown) In that case, why not Setext, which is from 1991? I'll tell you why, because Markdown was meant to codify already in use norms, and to emphasize readability over all else: Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. To this end, Markdown’s syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look like emphasis. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you’ve ever used email. - Markdown Syntax "Daring Fireball – Markdown – Syntax. 2013-06-13.[3] > those subsets would've been just as "simple" to learn I think not. For some, including me, markdown was almost zero-cost. It's how I wrote email. > but the blogosphere thought it was hot shit back then, and took great delight in pushing things viral. ergo markdown. I think that's highly simplistic, and ignores the realities. One of which is that it was pushed on Reddit, which has become one of the largest and most used sites on the internet. I find it hard to believe the blogospere opining on it (because it's not actually used on all that many blogs) has had more sway than them on this topic. 1: http://commonmark.org http://commonmark.org 2: https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/wiki/Deployed-Extensions https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/wiki/Deployed-Extensions 3: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosophy http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosoph...