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Hot take (maybe): GitHub flavored markdown is the ideal markup language. If the author’s ideas were actually better, we’d use them instead. It supports code we
by jakear 7y ago
Hot take (maybe): GitHub flavored markdown is the ideal markup language. If the author’s ideas were actually better, we’d use them instead.
It supports code well, it supports non-enumerated lists well, it supports enumerated lists well (if you don’t want view it in rendered markdown, you can view the raw and just disregard the numbers, understanding that the items are supposed to be sequential). It supports links well. It supports images well. It’s easily readable, even with no prior context (@toml, yaml, etc.).
It does whatever a static website could want, and it does it all decently well.
- judge2020 7y agoPeople tend to use whatever they have to use to be on a platform since these different parsers aren't portable. Everyone is on GH for the code hosting, getting a markdown editor that works is a bonus. If you go to any other community that uses a different markdown standard or even something that's not markdown, people will be using that - not because it's better than GH flavored markdown, but because that's what's available.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoNot true in the slightest. I used for periods of my life StackOverflow, Jira/Confluence, and bbcode exclusively and hated interacting with each of their markup languages.
- b0rsuk 7y agoGithub supports reStructuredText just fine. You can even display images in Readme without any extension, just a plain image directive.
- beart 7y agoYes the author praises GitHub flavored markdown. The criticisms presented are on gaps in the original markdown design, not implementations.
- swyx 7y agoauthor here. yup. tried to make that clear by constantly referring to Gruber's spec. A few years ago I didn't even know there were different flavors of markdown. Fortunately/Unfortunately Gruber's is the one that stuck and is universally accepted by all markdown tooling, hence it is now the lowest common denominator we must work with.
- arve0 7y agoHave you seen the commonmark standard? Did not see that mentioned. https://commonmark.org/ https://commonmark.org/
- dpbriggs 7y agoI think we're using it because GitHub renders GitHub flavoured markdown well. Thankfully it also renders Org files pretty well, which AFAIK supports everything listed and more.