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I’m slightly relieved reading this. I see markdown everywhere, I can’t stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about it. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.

I’m slightly relieved reading this. I see markdown everywhere, I can’t stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about it. It’s nice to know I’m not alone. Unfortunately I don’t think markdown is going anywhere. I think I see it far more than ever and there’s no sign of it slowing down.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
Textile and LaTeX are better, anyway. At least it's not HTML or BBCode.
ncallaway 5y ago
I have been sent word documents that I’ve been totally unable to read. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I haven’t been able to read. I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I’m not able to easily edit. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I’ve been unable to edit. For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular because plain text works everywhere. I’m not convinced that markdown is the ultimate format, but it has more good properties than most other available formats.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct But "looks correct" for PDF presumes a certain form factor of the device used, because of the fixed page size. PDFs are a pain on many e-readers because they are laid out for US letter or A4 at a certain resolution. On a smaller device I often find I have a choice of either a. seeing an entire page at one time, as intended, but needing a magnifier to read anything, or b. zooming in to be able to read the text comfortably but then having to scroll left/right/up/down to read. There's no option in PDF to reflow the text to fit the resolution and size of the device. I'm not much of a fan of epub but at least the text reflow allows for normal reading. Also, exporting text from a PDF to import to anything else is trying at best.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I agree with you, markdown is far better than what you’ve described. It’s an interesting thing to consider. How do we get somewhere sane between markdown and say HTML for example? What would that look like? Can you get the ease of markdown with something that would let us do more too?
unethical_ban 5y ago
I fell in love with Markdown in the early 2010s. My team at work didn't have a corporate wiki, and the only alternative to documentation was network shares and non-searchable folder hierarchies. I installed Dokuwiki, and its editing is all markdown. The alternative became Confluence, which is now a pretty decent product(for the end user, I can't speak to operating it). But in 2013, the editor was terrible. WYSIWYG was broken and non-deterministic. You never knew how it was going to try to "intelligently" format your next press of the enter key, or bullet list or table. There was no visual cue on the work it was doing for you. Markdown is very clear, if limited: There is no ambiguity on how it will format a page. I will say, I think there are tools that provide WYSIWYG composers that store data in Markdown backend, giving the benefits of both easy editing, and a stable, human-editable source format.
cratermoon 5y ago
> I can’t stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about it. I wonder why people can't stand it. It's raw material that can be easily be transformed into a plethora of formats, both open and propriety. See e.g. https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

Textile and LaTeX are better, anyway. At least it's not HTML or BBCode.

ncallaway 5y ago

I have been sent word documents that I’ve been totally unable to read. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I haven’t been able to read. I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I’m not able to easily edit. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I’ve been unable to edit. For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular because plain text works everywhere. I’m not convinced that markdown is the ultimate format, but it has more good properties than most other available formats.

cratermoon 5y ago
> I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct But "looks correct" for PDF presumes a certain form factor of the device used, because of the fixed page size. PDFs are a pain on many e-readers because they are laid out for US letter or A4 at a certain resolution. On a smaller device I often find I have a choice of either a. seeing an entire page at one time, as intended, but needing a magnifier to read anything, or b. zooming in to be able to read the text comfortably but then having to scroll left/right/up/down to read. There's no option in PDF to reflow the text to fit the resolution and size of the device. I'm not much of a fan of epub but at least the text reflow allows for normal reading. Also, exporting text from a PDF to import to anything else is trying at best.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
I agree with you, markdown is far better than what you’ve described. It’s an interesting thing to consider. How do we get somewhere sane between markdown and say HTML for example? What would that look like? Can you get the ease of markdown with something that would let us do more too?

unethical_ban 5y ago

I fell in love with Markdown in the early 2010s. My team at work didn't have a corporate wiki, and the only alternative to documentation was network shares and non-searchable folder hierarchies. I installed Dokuwiki, and its editing is all markdown. The alternative became Confluence, which is now a pretty decent product(for the end user, I can't speak to operating it). But in 2013, the editor was terrible. WYSIWYG was broken and non-deterministic. You never knew how it was going to try to "intelligently" format your next press of the enter key, or bullet list or table. There was no visual cue on the work it was doing for you. Markdown is very clear, if limited: There is no ambiguity on how it will format a page. I will say, I think there are tools that provide WYSIWYG composers that store data in Markdown backend, giving the benefits of both easy editing, and a stable, human-editable source format.

cratermoon 5y ago

> I can’t stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about it. I wonder why people can't stand it. It's raw material that can be easily be transformed into a plethora of formats, both open and propriety. See e.g. https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/