3 ms·

I love the idea but have given up on Markdown - any chance you can also support AsciiDoc?

by smoyer 6y ago

tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
What's the benefit AsciiDoc has over Markdown?
- smoyer 6y ago
  It has many features that are added to MarkDown in incompatible ways (e.g. I was frustrated with tables in the various dialects). I know that the MarkDown stance is that you should just embed HTML but I know HTML well so I might as well write the whole document that way. I experimented with reStructured text and AsciiDoc and found the latter better. Combined with PanDoc ... it's amazing. I should also note that I'm happily using AsciiDoc with Hugo instead of MarkDown so I was hoping it was available here.
- jkmcf 6y ago
  Markdown is great for simple pages, but you need a Markdown pre-processor to do more advanced work like including another markdown file. E.g., you want to write a book and each file is a chapter. If you are writing something with code samples you might want the code files separate so you can test they are correct.
jakeprins 6y ago
I think it's going to stay Markdown
- smoyer 6y ago
  Just looked at my inbox and I really didn't sign up for "Serverless SaaS Demo" ... what's the relation between the two? Confirming my email address seems to have added me to the sales campaign for the wrong product.
  - jakeprins 6y ago
    It showed the wrong name, sorry for that. SidePage is bootstrapped with Serverless SaaS, a starter kit I made (https://serverless.page https://serverless.page), and I forgot to change the name inside the email template. Should be fixed now.
    - smoyer 6y ago
      The link in my email now goes to a blank page so I suspect that any future sign-ups will indeed route to a different page.
elviejo 6y ago
I agree asciidoc is superior to markdown... however, "the worst is better" attitude in our industry will make sure that markdown continuous to thrive.
- smoyer 6y ago
  > "the worst is better" attitude I think that's a general misunderstanding and that often "simpler is better" should apply (e.g. the Unix philosophy about tools). In this case, I think that parsing either format is equally complex and that MarkDown's complexity is greater than AsciiDocs when considering the lack of compatibility between extended features (e.g. I found subtle rendering differences between Github and Gitlab which were our public and private repos at my last position. I think the real fallacy here is that it will cost too much to switch. It really only took a couple of days for muscle memory to adapt from Markdown to AsciiDoc and so I'd challenge HN readers to give AsciiDoc a one-week trial.

I love the idea but have given up on Markdown - any chance you can also support AsciiDoc?

by smoyer 6y ago

I love the idea but have given up on Markdown - any chance you can also support AsciiDoc?

tenaciousDaniel 6y ago

What's the benefit AsciiDoc has over Markdown?

smoyer 6y ago
It has many features that are added to MarkDown in incompatible ways (e.g. I was frustrated with tables in the various dialects). I know that the MarkDown stance is that you should just embed HTML but I know HTML well so I might as well write the whole document that way. I experimented with reStructured text and AsciiDoc and found the latter better. Combined with PanDoc ... it's amazing. I should also note that I'm happily using AsciiDoc with Hugo instead of MarkDown so I was hoping it was available here.
jkmcf 6y ago
Markdown is great for simple pages, but you need a Markdown pre-processor to do more advanced work like including another markdown file. E.g., you want to write a book and each file is a chapter. If you are writing something with code samples you might want the code files separate so you can test they are correct.

jakeprins 6y ago

I think it's going to stay Markdown

smoyer 6y ago
Just looked at my inbox and I really didn't sign up for "Serverless SaaS Demo" ... what's the relation between the two? Confirming my email address seems to have added me to the sales campaign for the wrong product.
- jakeprins 6y ago
  It showed the wrong name, sorry for that. SidePage is bootstrapped with Serverless SaaS, a starter kit I made (https://serverless.page https://serverless.page), and I forgot to change the name inside the email template. Should be fixed now.
  - smoyer 6y ago
    The link in my email now goes to a blank page so I suspect that any future sign-ups will indeed route to a different page.

elviejo 6y ago

I agree asciidoc is superior to markdown... however, "the worst is better" attitude in our industry will make sure that markdown continuous to thrive.

smoyer 6y ago
> "the worst is better" attitude I think that's a general misunderstanding and that often "simpler is better" should apply (e.g. the Unix philosophy about tools). In this case, I think that parsing either format is equally complex and that MarkDown's complexity is greater than AsciiDocs when considering the lack of compatibility between extended features (e.g. I found subtle rendering differences between Github and Gitlab which were our public and private repos at my last position. I think the real fallacy here is that it will cost too much to switch. It really only took a couple of days for muscle memory to adapt from Markdown to AsciiDoc and so I'd challenge HN readers to give AsciiDoc a one-week trial.