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> It should be readable, as a complete document, in its existing text form without any transformation. Is this _needed_, or is this nice to have? A markup lan
by nooyurrsdey 4y ago
> It should be readable, as a complete document, in its existing text form without any transformation.
Is this _needed_, or is this nice to have?
A markup language annotates text and describes _how it should be rendered_. It feels redundant to describe how a document should be rendered (presumable for final consumption) _and_ have the document be readable as-is.
Case in point: I'd argue that HTML is a great markup language. I wouldn't call it the most readable in its current form.
I agree with the spirit here, but it ultimately feels more "nice to have" than truly required.
- kilociraptor 4y ago>> It should be readable, as a complete document, in its existing text form without any transformation. > Is this _needed_, or is this nice to have? It's kind of the ur usecase of markup languages. Without this property WYSIWYG is significantly better.
- asicsp 4y agoI like markup over WYSIWYG because I can use my preferred text editor, can be version controlled, reused in multiple places (reddit, github, etc). I like that the markup I use (Markdown) is readable as is, but I wouldn't mind losing a bit of readability for more features.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoVery much disagree. Think about Markdown readmes. It's great, and very useful, that when looking through a git repo that I can just look at the readme in a shell or text editor, and also as important, diffs when changing a markdown file are a lot cleaner/easier to understand. Simultaneously, it's also great that I get a nice formatted readme page when I'm browsing a GitHub repo, for example. As the sibling commenter said, if all you care about is the output why wouldn't you just write it in Word?
- lmm 4y ago> Case in point: I'd argue that HTML is a great markup language. By what measure? I'd consider HTML an awful, awful markup language.