> The spirit of Markdown is succinctly described on DF's Markdown project website. > "Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain t

> The spirit of Markdown is succinctly described on DF's Markdown project website. > "Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format." The third/fourth person to quote the original article while failing to acknowledge this paragraph from the same article: > 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. Your quote brings up two things that might be in conflict sometimes: 1. Being easy to write 2. Being easy to read Given that the “overriding design goal” (my emphasis) is to be as “readable as possible”, it immediately follows that (2) takes precedence over (1). Which is why you assertion here: > While Mermaid isn't as nice-to-read, it's still easy-to-read. It's also much easier to modify than ASCII art. Misses the point—the original spirit is to be easy to read, and that does (by implication) take precedence over being easy to write.