4 ms·

Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comments?

5 points by RivieraKid 6y ago

warpech 6y ago
I guess it's for historical reasons. Markdown wasn't really that popular before GitHub made it popular. Hacker News is older than GitHub.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
As implemented in most places, Markdown does many unexpected things to user text. e.g. changing numbers in lists, breaking some urls, breaking textart.
- jolmg 6y ago
  In Gitlab's Markdown, I don't know how to insert a backtick in between backticks. I tried escaping it with a backslash, by doubling it, etc. It seems impossible to put a single plainly-visible backtick. HN could be said to have a very minimal Markdown, with it's support for using asterisks for adding italics. We can't have plain asterisks, because of that, though. I rather have no Markdown than Markdown that doesn't have escaping facilities to allow expressing all plaintext.
  - ahuang1018 6y ago
    Actually you could insert a backtick in between backticks in GitLab's markdown. ref: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722
troydavis 6y ago
If one commenter wanted to get attention for their comment, they’d overuse large headings and bold. A lot of Markdown’s value comes from consistent use throughout a document (here, all comments).
oftenwrong 6y ago
HN does not often add new features. I assume this is the main reason HN has not added Markdown. I would prefer that HN continues to NOT support Markdown. After all, the entire point of Markdown is that it should be readable in its unprocessed form [1]. Therefore, Markdown obviates its own utility: Why not just present the source text of a comment as-is? Why confuse non-savvy users with behaviour like collapsing line breaks [2]? [1] "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that 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." https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfir... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  First, the processed form is more readable than the unprocessed form. And second, when I write a comment here in Markdown, what is displayed is worse than unprocessed Markdown. For example lists: - One - Two
  - satvikpendem 6y ago
    Lists require a new line between each item: - One - Two
    - RivieraKid 6y ago
      Yeah, but it looks ugly, too much space between the items.
satvikpendem 6y ago
HN does implement Markdown to some extent, such as lists, italics, quotes, code blocks, etc.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  HN doesn't support lists or quotes at all, and I don't think the italic or code block support is exactly markdown compatible, though it's similar.
  - satvikpendem 6y ago
    I can make lists just fine: - One - Two And quotes
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      The thing you are calling “quotes” is a code block, and the thing you are calling lists is no formatting at all, just HN presenting exactly the text you entered.
      - satvikpendem 6y ago
        People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes on this site. With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes on this site. They aren't markdown quotes, which was the claim made. “People on the site use HN’s almost-markdown code blocks for quotes” is true. HN supports markdown code blocks and markdown quotes is not; it supports code blocks in a way that approximates markdowns, and has no separate quote functionality. > With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist. But...it doesn't. HN allowing you to type text and not transforming it at all isn't support for markdown (or any other kind of) lists. The claim upthread was that lists were another markdown feature that HN supported. It does not. Now, it's true that markdown’s markup for lists is itself a manner commonly used for presenting lists in unformatted text (a very big part of the idea of markdown is that it follows convention for plain-text presentation so that it is readable and recognizable without processing), but not recognizing or transforming a markdown feature isn't support for that markdown feature, even if by the nature of markdown the absence of transformation still leaves the intent recognizable.

5 points by RivieraKid 6y ago

I guess it's for historical reasons. Markdown wasn't really that popular before GitHub made it popular. Hacker News is older than GitHub.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

As implemented in most places, Markdown does many unexpected things to user text. e.g. changing numbers in lists, breaking some urls, breaking textart.

jolmg 6y ago
In Gitlab's Markdown, I don't know how to insert a backtick in between backticks. I tried escaping it with a backslash, by doubling it, etc. It seems impossible to put a single plainly-visible backtick. HN could be said to have a very minimal Markdown, with it's support for using asterisks for adding italics. We can't have plain asterisks, because of that, though. I rather have no Markdown than Markdown that doesn't have escaping facilities to allow expressing all plaintext.
- ahuang1018 6y ago
  Actually you could insert a backtick in between backticks in GitLab's markdown. ref: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722

troydavis 6y ago

If one commenter wanted to get attention for their comment, they’d overuse large headings and bold. A lot of Markdown’s value comes from consistent use throughout a document (here, all comments).

oftenwrong 6y ago

HN does not often add new features. I assume this is the main reason HN has not added Markdown. I would prefer that HN continues to NOT support Markdown. After all, the entire point of Markdown is that it should be readable in its unprocessed form [1]. Therefore, Markdown obviates its own utility: Why not just present the source text of a comment as-is? Why confuse non-savvy users with behaviour like collapsing line breaks [2]? [1] "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that 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." https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfir... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936

RivieraKid 6y ago
First, the processed form is more readable than the unprocessed form. And second, when I write a comment here in Markdown, what is displayed is worse than unprocessed Markdown. For example lists: - One - Two
- satvikpendem 6y ago
  Lists require a new line between each item: - One - Two
  - RivieraKid 6y ago
    Yeah, but it looks ugly, too much space between the items.

satvikpendem 6y ago

HN does implement Markdown to some extent, such as lists, italics, quotes, code blocks, etc.

dragonwriter 6y ago
HN doesn't support lists or quotes at all, and I don't think the italic or code block support is exactly markdown compatible, though it's similar.
- satvikpendem 6y ago
  I can make lists just fine: - One - Two And quotes
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    The thing you are calling “quotes” is a code block, and the thing you are calling lists is no formatting at all, just HN presenting exactly the text you entered.
    - satvikpendem 6y ago
      People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes on this site. With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes on this site. They aren't markdown quotes, which was the claim made. “People on the site use HN’s almost-markdown code blocks for quotes” is true. HN supports markdown code blocks and markdown quotes is not; it supports code blocks in a way that approximates markdowns, and has no separate quote functionality. > With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist. But...it doesn't. HN allowing you to type text and not transforming it at all isn't support for markdown (or any other kind of) lists. The claim upthread was that lists were another markdown feature that HN supported. It does not. Now, it's true that markdown’s markup for lists is itself a manner commonly used for presenting lists in unformatted text (a very big part of the idea of markdown is that it follows convention for plain-text presentation so that it is readable and recognizable without processing), but not recognizing or transforming a markdown feature isn't support for that markdown feature, even if by the nature of markdown the absence of transformation still leaves the intent recognizable.