6 ms·

My biggest gripe with markdown for writing is its removal of single intentional newlines.

by Aardwolf 7y ago

antipaul 7y ago
I think you can achieve that with 2 spaces at the end
- Aardwolf 7y ago
  Yes, but, my gripe is how markdown breaks standard plain text behavior, without requiring extra formatting (those two spaces). They should have required the extra formatting for the opposite case, if you want to break a line in your code for some reason but not in the final result. Confusingly those two spaces also don't work in hacker news comments while some other markdown features do. If it was like plain text, with a few ascii symbols used for formatting (like *, _, ...), it'd have been more fantastic than now. BBCode is better imho.
  - tobylane 7y ago
    The backslash\ may qualify, and it’s part of the standard.
  - jachee 7y ago
    > while some other markdown features do. The only two markdown features afaik that work on HN are italics with asterisks and code blocks with 4 spaces. That's it.
- ilammy 7y ago
  > 2 spaces at the end I prefer just plain "<br/>" because it does not mess with my editor configuration, which otherwise I have to constantly tweak between "strip all whitespace at the end of line" and back.
dbalatero 7y ago
I like it, as it lets me format at 80-char breaks to prevent infinite line lengths for paragraphs of text. This makes Github diffs easier to read as well.
- khc 7y ago
  except when you add one word and re-flow the entire paragraph
  - robinson-wall 7y ago
    Your editor should be able to help with that. For example in vim: `gqap` will reflow the current paragraph, or while in visual select mode you can use `gq` to reflow your selection).
    - CGamesPlay 7y ago
      This still ruins the diff view of the code, though. (e.g. git blame)
    - khc 7y ago
      that's exactly what causes the viewing diff problem that I was replying to
      - Spivak 7y ago
        --word-diff=color is your friend in this case.
  - ilammy 7y ago
    That's when semantic line-breaking comes into a picture. Put a line break before each new sentence and before each clause in a sentence. That makes the text much more diff-friendly, and tends to keep the line lengths at bay too.

My biggest gripe with markdown for writing is its removal of single intentional newlines.

antipaul 7y ago

I think you can achieve that with 2 spaces at the end

Aardwolf 7y ago
Yes, but, my gripe is how markdown breaks standard plain text behavior, without requiring extra formatting (those two spaces). They should have required the extra formatting for the opposite case, if you want to break a line in your code for some reason but not in the final result. Confusingly those two spaces also don't work in hacker news comments while some other markdown features do. If it was like plain text, with a few ascii symbols used for formatting (like *, _, ...), it'd have been more fantastic than now. BBCode is better imho.
- tobylane 7y ago
  The backslash\ may qualify, and it’s part of the standard.
- jachee 7y ago
  > while some other markdown features do. The only two markdown features afaik that work on HN are italics with asterisks and code blocks with 4 spaces. That's it.
ilammy 7y ago
> 2 spaces at the end I prefer just plain "<br/>" because it does not mess with my editor configuration, which otherwise I have to constantly tweak between "strip all whitespace at the end of line" and back.

dbalatero 7y ago

I like it, as it lets me format at 80-char breaks to prevent infinite line lengths for paragraphs of text. This makes Github diffs easier to read as well.

khc 7y ago
except when you add one word and re-flow the entire paragraph
- robinson-wall 7y ago
  Your editor should be able to help with that. For example in vim: `gqap` will reflow the current paragraph, or while in visual select mode you can use `gq` to reflow your selection).
  - CGamesPlay 7y ago
    This still ruins the diff view of the code, though. (e.g. git blame)
  - khc 7y ago
    that's exactly what causes the viewing diff problem that I was replying to
    - Spivak 7y ago
      --word-diff=color is your friend in this case.
- ilammy 7y ago
  That's when semantic line-breaking comes into a picture. Put a line break before each new sentence and before each clause in a sentence. That makes the text much more diff-friendly, and tends to keep the line lengths at bay too.