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I recently started exploring, and slowly migrating, to .mdx over .md for content. So far it’s been a breath of fresh air tbh. My biggest problem of markdown was

I recently started exploring, and slowly migrating, to .mdx over .md for content. So far it’s been a breath of fresh air tbh. My biggest problem of markdown was the specific flavor I happen to be using and the type of cliffs I’d run into, then how to extend them. I’m extremely satisfied with 80-90% of the standard Gitbook markdown flavor. Then every now and then I really wanna make a complicated table, or a code block highlighting few lines while maintaining syntax highlighting, or an interactive slider, or a formula calculator that’s built-in the documentation instead of a complicated function, or a particular graph/chart etc. I don’t know how something like mdx would work for a large team (ever tried to clone Microsoft’s doc repo?) but at least for my own stuff, it seems like a definite improvement.

FractalHQ 3y ago
I couldn’t agree more. Mdsvex was life changing when I discovered it: https://mdsvex.com https://mdsvex.com
rapnie 3y ago
> My biggest problem of markdown was the specific flavor I happen to be using and the type of cliffs I’d run into, then how to extend them. First time I heard of .mdx and looked up the site [0]. I am insufficiently in the loop of frontend standardization. Now it would be great to get rid of flavors and have one universal approach. In the Docs I read: > MDX is not coupled to React. You can also use it with Preact, Vue, Emotion, Theme UI, etc. Both the classic and automatic JSX runtimes are supported. A sibling comment already mentions a Svelte implementation [1]. So I fail to see how this doesn't open a pandora's box of yet more flavors, this time coupled to frontend frameworks. First in .mdx and then incompatible with .md Extensibility. Yes, I guess, if your stack is supported by any of the existing implementations. [0] https://mdxjs.com/docs/what-is-mdx/ https://mdxjs.com/docs/what-is-mdx/ [1] https://mdsvex.com/docs https://mdsvex.com/docs
- friendzis 3y ago
  JSX is evidence that new generation of programmers are not taught engineering. There are very valid reasons why we went for encapsulation and separation of concerns. JSX throws the baby with the bath water and goes back to PHP5 sites with markup and code interspersed. Even authors of JSX cannot make it work reliably in their flagship product. MDX couples JSX with markdown. I cannot see how this yields maintainable source. Sure, spaghetti code is nice for quick, one off scripts, but if you'd volunteer for helpdesk shift to be yelled at rather than fix a bug in 5k SLOC collection of Windows Batch scripts, then maybe you should reconsider mdx.
FireInsight 3y ago
.mdx can be used with https://astro.build/ https://astro.build/ very easily, which is a JS metaframework and no-JS-shipped SSG-first approach. There are themes you can use, but for any modern web developer it would be pretty easy to roll your own.

FractalHQ 3y ago

I couldn’t agree more. Mdsvex was life changing when I discovered it: https://mdsvex.com https://mdsvex.com

rapnie 3y ago

> My biggest problem of markdown was the specific flavor I happen to be using and the type of cliffs I’d run into, then how to extend them. First time I heard of .mdx and looked up the site [0]. I am insufficiently in the loop of frontend standardization. Now it would be great to get rid of flavors and have one universal approach. In the Docs I read: > MDX is not coupled to React. You can also use it with Preact, Vue, Emotion, Theme UI, etc. Both the classic and automatic JSX runtimes are supported. A sibling comment already mentions a Svelte implementation [1]. So I fail to see how this doesn't open a pandora's box of yet more flavors, this time coupled to frontend frameworks. First in .mdx and then incompatible with .md Extensibility. Yes, I guess, if your stack is supported by any of the existing implementations. [0] https://mdxjs.com/docs/what-is-mdx/ https://mdxjs.com/docs/what-is-mdx/ [1] https://mdsvex.com/docs https://mdsvex.com/docs

friendzis 3y ago
JSX is evidence that new generation of programmers are not taught engineering. There are very valid reasons why we went for encapsulation and separation of concerns. JSX throws the baby with the bath water and goes back to PHP5 sites with markup and code interspersed. Even authors of JSX cannot make it work reliably in their flagship product. MDX couples JSX with markdown. I cannot see how this yields maintainable source. Sure, spaghetti code is nice for quick, one off scripts, but if you'd volunteer for helpdesk shift to be yelled at rather than fix a bug in 5k SLOC collection of Windows Batch scripts, then maybe you should reconsider mdx.

FireInsight 3y ago

.mdx can be used with https://astro.build/ https://astro.build/ very easily, which is a JS metaframework and no-JS-shipped SSG-first approach. There are themes you can use, but for any modern web developer it would be pretty easy to roll your own.