5 ms·

It's funny to watch Markdown gradually reinvent HTML as it originally was (though with much more readable syntax) And I don't actually think that's a bad thing

It's funny to watch Markdown gradually reinvent HTML as it originally was (though with much more readable syntax) And I don't actually think that's a bad thing, so long as it stops there. HTML has become much more than documents, so having a constrained subset dedicated to documents is helpful.

blacktriangle 5y ago
Markdown hasn't changed a bit from its reference implementation, it can't. Everybody who grabbed onto Markdown and is forking it because they're realizing that it was a very simple tool to solve one man's blogging problem and ignored all the other more comprehensive LWMLs is reinventing HTML.
- brundolf 5y ago
  GitHub-flavored Markdown is different; it's almost taken over as the de-facto standard. There are lots of wacky extensions out there, but this isn't just another one of those.
- daxelrod 5y ago
  What's interesting about that is that John Gruber uses footnotes extensively in his own blog posts (and has since approximately 2005), but chooses to implement them with HTML snippets rather than having created a dedicated Markdown syntax for them. For example, see https://daringfireball.net/2005/07/footnotes.text https://daringfireball.net/2005/07/footnotes.text
tomrod 5y ago
To be fair, it is simpler than HTML. Like Java vs. Python. You can sure do a lot with Java, but sometimes you just want the beauty of Python without injection, ya know?
- munch117 5y ago
  I don't understand how you can say that. Markdown is massively more complicated than the equivalent HTML. HTML syntax is simple: Every gizmo is expressed as a <tag> and optionally an end </tag>, there are escapes for <, > and &, and that's all that ever needs escaping. Markdown, on the other hand, has a syntax that is ever expanding. It's all exceptions to exceptions to exceptions (exceptions all the way down). For example, what happens if in a markdown document talking about regular expressions you have this text: [^A-Za-z]. Will it be interpreted as a footnote? Or is it an exception? Who knows, only trial and error will tell.
  - kyleee 5y ago
    And it may be handled differently between the many "flavors" of markdown! In my experience, with decent editor assistance to help with boilerplate, closing html tags, etx. I enjoy writing simple docs more in html
  - brundolf 5y ago
    You're talking about parsing/syntax, but what matters here is semantics. (Normal) Markdown maps to a small subset of all possible HTML tags, most of them on the simpler end of things, and that makes its overall scope and semantics simpler than those of HTML, even if its syntax is not.
    - munch117 5y ago
      Means and ends. If your means are complex, but the ends you are achieving are simple, then you're not getting good value for money. If I am to abide complex syntax then I'd better get sophisticated, powerful semantics in return. HTML 1.0 (no CSS, no JS, no floats) is very similar in scope to Markdown. I wish every site that uses Markdown would allow me to write something like HTML 1.0 instead. It would be so much easier, at least for me.
      - eevilspock 5y ago
        The whole point of machines is to do tedious or hard work so people don't have to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- FractalHQ 5y ago
  Pug is HTML but beautiful and more powerful, I’m surprised it hasn’t been brought up. The best format I’ve found to author web pages, though, is definitely MDSvex [1], which is essentially markdown with built in syntax highlighting for code blocks, vanilla HTML if needed, and Svelte / Svelte components for any reactivity / reusable components if JS is needed. Stick some pug in the Svelte Component and I’ve got unlimited power in a beautiful, readable syntax with 0 boilerplate, all compiling to vanilla HTML and optionally hydrating JS. Love it! [1] https://mdsvex.com https://mdsvex.com
stilisstuk 5y ago
Just use restructured text (rST) already.
- bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
  No, asciidoctor! Asciidoctor is the most intuitive markup format there is (except maybe Pollen, but that’s a non starter for most people). Also, rST can’t even do bold italics.
  - jsilence 5y ago
    Nothing beats org-mode.
    - subsection1h 5y ago
      Yeah, Org mode has supported footnotes since 2008: https://github.com/bzg/org-mode/commit/40a149354c4e5992abac467d69c1438dd1ba750b https://github.com/bzg/org-mode/commit/40a149354c4e5992abac4...
    - cfjgvjh 5y ago
      If only I could have it in any other way than emacs...
      - jsilence 5y ago
        Makes me wonder, since there is evil mode and opinionated Emacs disributions like Spacemacs und Doom Emacs, whether there is a potential for an org-mode focussed and optimized Emacs distribution. Ease of use should be one of the core goals, then.
        cfjgvjh 5y ago
        I would love that but then again org-noter and pdftools compliment base org-mode nicely.
  - iguessthislldo 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nixpulvis 5y ago
I'm personally very conservative about what I want added to markdown. I use it heavily because it doesn't provide me too many options. That said, links and references are a nice thing to have done well.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  I use Joplin to take notes, it's Markdown-based and it also includes some interesting extras like Mermaid support for diagrams. http://joplinapp.org/ http://joplinapp.org/ https://mermaid-js.github.io/ https://mermaid-js.github.io/
CyberShadow 5y ago
HTML doesn't have footnotes, does it?
- brundolf 5y ago
  It basically does. You can use anchors to approximate the behavior described here (it will be more verbose, but that's to be expected)
- Diti 5y ago
  HTML 5 has the aside tag, which has the semantics of footnotes.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    "Aside" is very rarely used as a footnote, and doesn't inherently have footnote semantics. Not even in W3C's rather underrepresented suggested usage (as distinguished from common practice): The objective of this technique is to use the HTML5 aside element to indicate that it's content is tangentially related to the main article or a parent section. The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography. https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_the_aside_element_to_indicate_tangentially_related_content https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_the_aside_element_to_in... https://awkawk.github.io/using_aside_content.html https://awkawk.github.io/using_aside_content.html Dive Into HTML5 anaogises <aside> to sidebars: The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography. The element can be used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, for advertising, for groups of nav elements, and for other content that is considered separate from the main content of the page. http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html
    - nextaccountic 5y ago
      > Dive Into HTML5 anaogises <aside> to sidebars: However, ctrl+f footnote doesn't return anything. What's the current best practice for writing footnotes with semantic html? If I were to implement footnotes with <aside>, how would it look like?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

blacktriangle 5y ago

Markdown hasn't changed a bit from its reference implementation, it can't. Everybody who grabbed onto Markdown and is forking it because they're realizing that it was a very simple tool to solve one man's blogging problem and ignored all the other more comprehensive LWMLs is reinventing HTML.

brundolf 5y ago
GitHub-flavored Markdown is different; it's almost taken over as the de-facto standard. There are lots of wacky extensions out there, but this isn't just another one of those.
daxelrod 5y ago
What's interesting about that is that John Gruber uses footnotes extensively in his own blog posts (and has since approximately 2005), but chooses to implement them with HTML snippets rather than having created a dedicated Markdown syntax for them. For example, see https://daringfireball.net/2005/07/footnotes.text https://daringfireball.net/2005/07/footnotes.text

tomrod 5y ago

To be fair, it is simpler than HTML. Like Java vs. Python. You can sure do a lot with Java, but sometimes you just want the beauty of Python without injection, ya know?

munch117 5y ago
I don't understand how you can say that. Markdown is massively more complicated than the equivalent HTML. HTML syntax is simple: Every gizmo is expressed as a <tag> and optionally an end </tag>, there are escapes for <, > and &, and that's all that ever needs escaping. Markdown, on the other hand, has a syntax that is ever expanding. It's all exceptions to exceptions to exceptions (exceptions all the way down). For example, what happens if in a markdown document talking about regular expressions you have this text: [^A-Za-z]. Will it be interpreted as a footnote? Or is it an exception? Who knows, only trial and error will tell.
- kyleee 5y ago
  And it may be handled differently between the many "flavors" of markdown! In my experience, with decent editor assistance to help with boilerplate, closing html tags, etx. I enjoy writing simple docs more in html
- brundolf 5y ago
  You're talking about parsing/syntax, but what matters here is semantics. (Normal) Markdown maps to a small subset of all possible HTML tags, most of them on the simpler end of things, and that makes its overall scope and semantics simpler than those of HTML, even if its syntax is not.
  - munch117 5y ago
    Means and ends. If your means are complex, but the ends you are achieving are simple, then you're not getting good value for money. If I am to abide complex syntax then I'd better get sophisticated, powerful semantics in return. HTML 1.0 (no CSS, no JS, no floats) is very similar in scope to Markdown. I wish every site that uses Markdown would allow me to write something like HTML 1.0 instead. It would be so much easier, at least for me.
    - eevilspock 5y ago
      The whole point of machines is to do tedious or hard work so people don't have to.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
FractalHQ 5y ago
Pug is HTML but beautiful and more powerful, I’m surprised it hasn’t been brought up. The best format I’ve found to author web pages, though, is definitely MDSvex [1], which is essentially markdown with built in syntax highlighting for code blocks, vanilla HTML if needed, and Svelte / Svelte components for any reactivity / reusable components if JS is needed. Stick some pug in the Svelte Component and I’ve got unlimited power in a beautiful, readable syntax with 0 boilerplate, all compiling to vanilla HTML and optionally hydrating JS. Love it! [1] https://mdsvex.com https://mdsvex.com

stilisstuk 5y ago

Just use restructured text (rST) already.

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
No, asciidoctor! Asciidoctor is the most intuitive markup format there is (except maybe Pollen, but that’s a non starter for most people). Also, rST can’t even do bold italics.
- jsilence 5y ago
  Nothing beats org-mode.
  - subsection1h 5y ago
    Yeah, Org mode has supported footnotes since 2008: https://github.com/bzg/org-mode/commit/40a149354c4e5992abac467d69c1438dd1ba750b https://github.com/bzg/org-mode/commit/40a149354c4e5992abac4...
  - cfjgvjh 5y ago
    If only I could have it in any other way than emacs...
    - jsilence 5y ago
      Makes me wonder, since there is evil mode and opinionated Emacs disributions like Spacemacs und Doom Emacs, whether there is a potential for an org-mode focussed and optimized Emacs distribution. Ease of use should be one of the core goals, then.
      - cfjgvjh 5y ago
        I would love that but then again org-noter and pdftools compliment base org-mode nicely.
- iguessthislldo 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nixpulvis 5y ago

I'm personally very conservative about what I want added to markdown. I use it heavily because it doesn't provide me too many options. That said, links and references are a nice thing to have done well.

m-p-3 5y ago
I use Joplin to take notes, it's Markdown-based and it also includes some interesting extras like Mermaid support for diagrams. http://joplinapp.org/ http://joplinapp.org/ https://mermaid-js.github.io/ https://mermaid-js.github.io/

CyberShadow 5y ago

HTML doesn't have footnotes, does it?

brundolf 5y ago
It basically does. You can use anchors to approximate the behavior described here (it will be more verbose, but that's to be expected)
Diti 5y ago
HTML 5 has the aside tag, which has the semantics of footnotes.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  "Aside" is very rarely used as a footnote, and doesn't inherently have footnote semantics. Not even in W3C's rather underrepresented suggested usage (as distinguished from common practice): The objective of this technique is to use the HTML5 aside element to indicate that it's content is tangentially related to the main article or a parent section. The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography. https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_the_aside_element_to_indicate_tangentially_related_content https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_the_aside_element_to_in... https://awkawk.github.io/using_aside_content.html https://awkawk.github.io/using_aside_content.html Dive Into HTML5 anaogises <aside> to sidebars: The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography. The element can be used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, for advertising, for groups of nav elements, and for other content that is considered separate from the main content of the page. http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    > Dive Into HTML5 anaogises <aside> to sidebars: However, ctrl+f footnote doesn't return anything. What's the current best practice for writing footnotes with semantic html? If I were to implement footnotes with <aside>, how would it look like?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]