3 ms·

I agree with a lot in this article. I too have seen 'non-technical' users struggle with Markdown. The popularity of Markdown among developers also reminds me ab

I agree with a lot in this article. I too have seen 'non-technical' users struggle with Markdown. The popularity of Markdown among developers also reminds me about SSGs (Static Site Generators). Two technologies loved by developers - and no-one else. "For limited use cases, like blog posts of simple rich text with images and links, markdown will get the job done." I'd argue it's even less suitable than that. Developers never look beyond Markdown when writing documentation or articles and are thus blissly unaware of the much richer writing possibilties of using HTML (which is simple to learn, unlike CSS). Full HTML also gives readers a much better reading experience. In Markdown, even a simple image caption is not possible.

ihateolives 5y ago
> Developers never look beyond Markdown when writing documentation or articles and are thus blissly unaware of the much richer writing possibilties of using HTML (which is simple to learn, unlike CSS). HTML is wolf in sheep's clothing though. It's deceptively simple to learn the basics, but the nested nature of it is something that will allow one to shoot their semantical or representational foot off, even before trying to apply CSS. Take, for example, humble P tag. The thing that trips up most people, for example, is that ideally you'd need to contain text blocks in paragraphs, not just have it free floating in the document. In theory. P tag is simple. Except that end tag is optional. When writing HTML, that is. But not always, as per standard: "A P element's end tag can be omitted if the p element is immediately followed by an address, article, aside, blockquote, details, div, dl, fieldset, figcaption, figure, footer, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, header, hgroup, hr, main, menu, nav, ol, p, pre, section, table, or ul element, or if there is no more content in the parent element and the parent element is an HTML element that is not an a, audio, del, ins, map, noscript, or video element, or an autonomous custom element." But in XHTML end tag is always required. And you shouldn't have block level elements like images within P. And you can't nest them. When outputting DIV with a block of text that DIV should contain a P, not just text. DIV's are cool, you can nest DIVs. And they need end tag. Simple? Well: "Authors are strongly encouraged to view the div element as an element of last resort, for when no other element is suitable. Use of more appropriate elements instead of the div element leads to better accessibility for readers and easier maintainability for authors." But who does that nowadays? It's DIVs all the way down usually. So no, HTML is not simple. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/
- gerikson 5y ago
  XHTML was quietly led behind the shed and shot a decade ago. I bumped into a site with that cute little XHTML approved logo, and checked if it verified. Of course it didn't.
- tannhaeuser 5y ago
  The tag omission/inference rules for <p> come from SGML, and, as presented in WHATWG's HTML spec, seem arbitrary. But actually what they're saying is that a paragraph is automatically ended on a non-phrasing element. In earlier HTML versions, a definition of flow content was given like this: <!ENTITY % flow "%block;|%inline"> where the flow, block, and inline parameter entities expand to strings like a|abbr|... such that they can be used in element declarations as follows: <!ELEMENT p (#PCDATA|%phrasing -(%flow_only|figcaption)> meaning the content of p can be any phrasing element (and text content), except elements that are in the flow_only category or the figcaption element, capturing precisely HTML5's rules. While Ian Hickson's initial (HTML5.0) rules were exactly corresponding to those of HTML4.01, later HTML5 revisions (^2) indeed failed to update the prose description for p-terminating elements, for the very reason that those weren't presented as a formal spec (such as a DTD). In a presentation I held [1] I made exactly that point for the p element, and you might find the derivation of a new SGML DTD grammar for HTML5.x generally of interest. [1]: http://sgmljs.net/docs/html5-dtd-slides-wrapper.html http://sgmljs.net/docs/html5-dtd-slides-wrapper.html ^2: if WHATWG had bothered to version their specs, and W3C still would produce versioned snapshots of those, at least

ihateolives 5y ago

> Developers never look beyond Markdown when writing documentation or articles and are thus blissly unaware of the much richer writing possibilties of using HTML (which is simple to learn, unlike CSS). HTML is wolf in sheep's clothing though. It's deceptively simple to learn the basics, but the nested nature of it is something that will allow one to shoot their semantical or representational foot off, even before trying to apply CSS. Take, for example, humble P tag. The thing that trips up most people, for example, is that ideally you'd need to contain text blocks in paragraphs, not just have it free floating in the document. In theory. P tag is simple. Except that end tag is optional. When writing HTML, that is. But not always, as per standard: "A P element's end tag can be omitted if the p element is immediately followed by an address, article, aside, blockquote, details, div, dl, fieldset, figcaption, figure, footer, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, header, hgroup, hr, main, menu, nav, ol, p, pre, section, table, or ul element, or if there is no more content in the parent element and the parent element is an HTML element that is not an a, audio, del, ins, map, noscript, or video element, or an autonomous custom element." But in XHTML end tag is always required. And you shouldn't have block level elements like images within P. And you can't nest them. When outputting DIV with a block of text that DIV should contain a P, not just text. DIV's are cool, you can nest DIVs. And they need end tag. Simple? Well: "Authors are strongly encouraged to view the div element as an element of last resort, for when no other element is suitable. Use of more appropriate elements instead of the div element leads to better accessibility for readers and easier maintainability for authors." But who does that nowadays? It's DIVs all the way down usually. So no, HTML is not simple. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/

gerikson 5y ago
XHTML was quietly led behind the shed and shot a decade ago. I bumped into a site with that cute little XHTML approved logo, and checked if it verified. Of course it didn't.
tannhaeuser 5y ago
The tag omission/inference rules for <p> come from SGML, and, as presented in WHATWG's HTML spec, seem arbitrary. But actually what they're saying is that a paragraph is automatically ended on a non-phrasing element. In earlier HTML versions, a definition of flow content was given like this: <!ENTITY % flow "%block;|%inline"> where the flow, block, and inline parameter entities expand to strings like a|abbr|... such that they can be used in element declarations as follows: <!ELEMENT p (#PCDATA|%phrasing -(%flow_only|figcaption)> meaning the content of p can be any phrasing element (and text content), except elements that are in the flow_only category or the figcaption element, capturing precisely HTML5's rules. While Ian Hickson's initial (HTML5.0) rules were exactly corresponding to those of HTML4.01, later HTML5 revisions (^2) indeed failed to update the prose description for p-terminating elements, for the very reason that those weren't presented as a formal spec (such as a DTD). In a presentation I held [1] I made exactly that point for the p element, and you might find the derivation of a new SGML DTD grammar for HTML5.x generally of interest. [1]: http://sgmljs.net/docs/html5-dtd-slides-wrapper.html http://sgmljs.net/docs/html5-dtd-slides-wrapper.html ^2: if WHATWG had bothered to version their specs, and W3C still would produce versioned snapshots of those, at least