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> We've had a variety of markup formats including HTML, XML, etc. which are relatively a pain to read or write. Right, but Markdown relies on HTML (or whateve

> We've had a variety of markup formats including HTML, XML, etc. which are relatively a pain to read or write. Right, but Markdown relies on HTML (or whatever other markup it is pre-procesing) for anything difficult. I like Markdown[0] but surely our job as technologists is to find better solutions than a system that requires you to escape asterisks in certain situations, or rely on a preview pane to work out what it will do. [0] but YAML front matter should burn in the fire

simias 5y ago
I would argue that it may be a case of "less is more". Yes Markdown is limited, but the limits make the language trivial to learn, modify and understand. It also means that the format can be trivially displayed almost anywhere and converted to all sorts of other formats. There will always be a tradeoff between simplicity and the feature set, I find that for the vast majority of my use cases Markdown is simply good enough. When I read markdown docs on github I usually get a pleasant sense of familiarity, everybody tends to gravitate towards the same basic layout because that's what Markdown does. That's a feature IMO, it means that you can focus on the content, not waste time parsing the quirky layout. Monthly reminder that Gopher should've won btw.
- gerikson 5y ago
  Check out Gemini, its format is even more limited than Markdown, and it's TLS-native unlike Gopher. Gopher might have won if students had ~/public_gopher directories, but it was not to be...
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Gopher would not and could not have won, for two very good reasons: (Would not) -- it was more complex to implement, being stateful (and it lacked the markup flexibility of HTML, which was kind of a big draw) (Could not) -- the University of Minnesota announced their intention to collect licensing fees on their Gopher server (and client, I think), which was invented there. This was a key moment in the web's development, because as a response CERN disclaimed ownership of web technologies -- under some pressure from IBM, as I recall, and IBM threw their research weight behind HTML/HTTP[0] And that was that, basically. All happened in a few weeks in 1993. (I can't find you a link to a discussion of IBM's action, but I can describe in detail the flashback to a freezing-cold, excesively-air-conditioned Sun SLC workstation lab at the University of Reading where I first read about it) People crushing on Gopher these days do make me smile. Sure, it's like vinyl records. [0] though this is hazy, I think they also made a promise not to assert relevant patents they held
    - gerikson 5y ago
      Thanks a lot for expanding. I had no idea IBM was present at the creation, like some spirit of evil ;) Netscape Navigator handling images was also a Big Deal(tm). Of course, there could have been a graphical (X) gopher client that showed images, but just like the people who like gopher and gemini now dislike images, I suspect it was the same then (think of the bandwidth!) It's hard to convey how intensely cool it felt to be part of the early web, and images, differently sized and colored fonts were a big part of it.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        > Thanks a lot for expanding. I had no idea IBM was present at the creation, like some spirit of evil ;) It's not so much at the creation -- it's several years in (four years in for HTML/HTTP). Though it is about when I became aware of it. What I recall of the time is that the web was just becoming a point of research interest, and big firms had product R+D interest. Like I say, I can't find anything to prove my recollection now -- so it could well be wholly unreliable! -- but my specific recollection from damn year 29 years ago is that IBM's response (and likely the response of others) to the Gopher server licence situation was to seek clarification from CERN over their intentions with the web. IBM also had patents (concerning hypermedia) that were relevant but were never asserted. It would always have been Tim Berners-Lee's intention to not assert patents but CERN obviously was his employer. > It's hard to convey how intensely cool it felt Were you in that same workstation lab in Reading, then? Seriously, you had to wear a coat and scarf if you were in one corner...
        jibalt 5y ago
        cool = hip
        gerikson 5y ago
        No, it was a lab in Stockolm filled with Sparcstations…
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
civilized 5y ago
Why would we think there is a better solution? There's only so many symbols on the keyboard. There's only so many symbols in ASCII. That's how you end up having to escape things. An asterisk literal usually belongs inside single or triple backticks IMO, and you won't have to escape it there.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Right, but then you have to explain to end-users why they need to escape an asterisk, or why they have to have their content on screen twice -- once in source and once in frustratingly flickering preview. Personally I think it is our job as web developers not to encourage this for end users. (Unless those end users are writing a book, in which case, definitely. Markdown as a source for Pandoc is fabulously better than a wordprocessor)
  - civilized 5y ago
    Users can avoid having to escape the asterisk by using Microsoft Word. It seems to me that you expect some perfect solution to exist, and it is this solution that technologists should make it their mission to find. I think there is no perfect solution and we should navigate the trade-offs holistically, rather than focusing on a single imperfection like suboptimal asterisks.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      > It seems to me that you expect some perfect solution to exist First, I don't mean in the Microsoft Word scenario, really (where I think that for very many applications, especially most books and most documentation, it's a very good tool). I mean on the web. If you're putting markdown in front of end users on the web, or even content contributors on the web, you're failing. Second, you're putting words into my mouth when you talk about a perfect solution because I said no such thing. I clearly said better solution. The absence of a perfect solution does not make Markdown equally as good as other possibilities. (For example, I believe that if you had to deploy a text-only editor to web-based end-users, Asciidoc is a more appropriate solution, even if I also accept it has lost the war)
0thgen 5y ago
what's worse: (a) a preview pane, or (b) a bloated editor (msWord) or mysterious web format (google docs) also, there's many WYSIWYG editors that do an awesome job (Typora, Zettlr, etc)
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  I really like Typora as it goes, I've used it myself, and I've begun to recommend it to people who are writing long-form documentation or books (because I like pandoc a lot). I have not used Zettlr but I will look at it; thanks for the recommendation. But I still think Markdown has little place in content management systems for end-users; it's obtuse.
  - 0thgen 5y ago
    fair point; outside of it's main use case (writing documents), we're better offer using more sophisticated tools

simias 5y ago

I would argue that it may be a case of "less is more". Yes Markdown is limited, but the limits make the language trivial to learn, modify and understand. It also means that the format can be trivially displayed almost anywhere and converted to all sorts of other formats. There will always be a tradeoff between simplicity and the feature set, I find that for the vast majority of my use cases Markdown is simply good enough. When I read markdown docs on github I usually get a pleasant sense of familiarity, everybody tends to gravitate towards the same basic layout because that's what Markdown does. That's a feature IMO, it means that you can focus on the content, not waste time parsing the quirky layout. Monthly reminder that Gopher should've won btw.

gerikson 5y ago
Check out Gemini, its format is even more limited than Markdown, and it's TLS-native unlike Gopher. Gopher might have won if students had ~/public_gopher directories, but it was not to be...
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Gopher would not and could not have won, for two very good reasons: (Would not) -- it was more complex to implement, being stateful (and it lacked the markup flexibility of HTML, which was kind of a big draw) (Could not) -- the University of Minnesota announced their intention to collect licensing fees on their Gopher server (and client, I think), which was invented there. This was a key moment in the web's development, because as a response CERN disclaimed ownership of web technologies -- under some pressure from IBM, as I recall, and IBM threw their research weight behind HTML/HTTP[0] And that was that, basically. All happened in a few weeks in 1993. (I can't find you a link to a discussion of IBM's action, but I can describe in detail the flashback to a freezing-cold, excesively-air-conditioned Sun SLC workstation lab at the University of Reading where I first read about it) People crushing on Gopher these days do make me smile. Sure, it's like vinyl records. [0] though this is hazy, I think they also made a promise not to assert relevant patents they held
  - gerikson 5y ago
    Thanks a lot for expanding. I had no idea IBM was present at the creation, like some spirit of evil ;) Netscape Navigator handling images was also a Big Deal(tm). Of course, there could have been a graphical (X) gopher client that showed images, but just like the people who like gopher and gemini now dislike images, I suspect it was the same then (think of the bandwidth!) It's hard to convey how intensely cool it felt to be part of the early web, and images, differently sized and colored fonts were a big part of it.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      > Thanks a lot for expanding. I had no idea IBM was present at the creation, like some spirit of evil ;) It's not so much at the creation -- it's several years in (four years in for HTML/HTTP). Though it is about when I became aware of it. What I recall of the time is that the web was just becoming a point of research interest, and big firms had product R+D interest. Like I say, I can't find anything to prove my recollection now -- so it could well be wholly unreliable! -- but my specific recollection from damn year 29 years ago is that IBM's response (and likely the response of others) to the Gopher server licence situation was to seek clarification from CERN over their intentions with the web. IBM also had patents (concerning hypermedia) that were relevant but were never asserted. It would always have been Tim Berners-Lee's intention to not assert patents but CERN obviously was his employer. > It's hard to convey how intensely cool it felt Were you in that same workstation lab in Reading, then? Seriously, you had to wear a coat and scarf if you were in one corner...
      - jibalt 5y ago
        cool = hip
      - gerikson 5y ago
        No, it was a lab in Stockolm filled with Sparcstations…

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

civilized 5y ago

Why would we think there is a better solution? There's only so many symbols on the keyboard. There's only so many symbols in ASCII. That's how you end up having to escape things. An asterisk literal usually belongs inside single or triple backticks IMO, and you won't have to escape it there.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Right, but then you have to explain to end-users why they need to escape an asterisk, or why they have to have their content on screen twice -- once in source and once in frustratingly flickering preview. Personally I think it is our job as web developers not to encourage this for end users. (Unless those end users are writing a book, in which case, definitely. Markdown as a source for Pandoc is fabulously better than a wordprocessor)
- civilized 5y ago
  Users can avoid having to escape the asterisk by using Microsoft Word. It seems to me that you expect some perfect solution to exist, and it is this solution that technologists should make it their mission to find. I think there is no perfect solution and we should navigate the trade-offs holistically, rather than focusing on a single imperfection like suboptimal asterisks.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    > It seems to me that you expect some perfect solution to exist First, I don't mean in the Microsoft Word scenario, really (where I think that for very many applications, especially most books and most documentation, it's a very good tool). I mean on the web. If you're putting markdown in front of end users on the web, or even content contributors on the web, you're failing. Second, you're putting words into my mouth when you talk about a perfect solution because I said no such thing. I clearly said better solution. The absence of a perfect solution does not make Markdown equally as good as other possibilities. (For example, I believe that if you had to deploy a text-only editor to web-based end-users, Asciidoc is a more appropriate solution, even if I also accept it has lost the war)

0thgen 5y ago

what's worse: (a) a preview pane, or (b) a bloated editor (msWord) or mysterious web format (google docs) also, there's many WYSIWYG editors that do an awesome job (Typora, Zettlr, etc)

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
I really like Typora as it goes, I've used it myself, and I've begun to recommend it to people who are writing long-form documentation or books (because I like pandoc a lot). I have not used Zettlr but I will look at it; thanks for the recommendation. But I still think Markdown has little place in content management systems for end-users; it's obtuse.
- 0thgen 5y ago
  fair point; outside of it's main use case (writing documents), we're better offer using more sophisticated tools