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> Markdown is a really poor storage format. There is quasi-official standard (CommonMark), but since it's feature-poor, people mostly use something else, like G
by qwerty456127 3y ago
> Markdown is a really poor storage format. There is quasi-official standard (CommonMark), but since it's feature-poor, people mostly use something else, like GitHub Markdown. Individual apps often extend Markdown in various incompatible ways.
I hope GitHub and Obsidian are going to synchronise their MarkDown extensions in near future and this will become The Standard. Whatever a case, anybody can easily write a script to automatically convert any Markdown flavour to another.
> why should books be in Markdown? Markdown's biggest (or the only?) advantage compared to binary/XML based formats is sort-of readability in plain text, but that's just not that important for the majority of publishers and readers.
Read anywhere. I mean anywhere. Without a need for software as complex and resource-hungry as a web browser engine ePub would require. I used to read TXT books on a pocket MP3 player during the pre-Android era. Also very easy automated processing.
In fact my actual preferred format for books is FB2. I mostly convert ePub books to FB2 to read on a PocketBook eInk device because it would use book-specified fonts and pages (which I never want) if I don't and FB2 is sort-of Markdown-like (in terms of its logic and features) XML. FB2 also has a great metadata section to store information about the book.
And besides books there also are documets. Word/LibreOffice documents others would send me often are real pain to modify as WYSIWYG word processors bundle tons of redundant invisible formatting details for every bit of text even when not asked for.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ©
- The_Colonel 3y ago> Without a need for software as complex and resource-hungry as a web browser engine ePub would require. I know that technology purists love that, but any electronic reading device handles HTML easily (especially the simple HTML in ePubs). The point becomes moot when your book contains images/illustrations and you (like a normal reader) want to view them within the content. You will use some Markdown formatter/viewer which is again based on browser. > Word/LibreOffice documents others would send me often are real pain to modify as WYSIWYG word processors bundle tons of redundant invisible formatting details for every bit of text even when not asked for. Markdown is just insufficient for any non-trivial document. There isn't any standard way to set image size for example. There's no standard way to create even rudimentary tables. > “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Then go for plain text. All those headings and asterisks are a distraction anyway. Years ago, many e-books used to be distributed in plain text in fact.
- qwerty456127 3y ago> Then go for plain text. All those headings and asterisks are a distraction anyway. Years ago, many e-books used to be distributed in plain text in fact. Markdown is more semantic. E.g. it gives you a ToC (a very important feature of a good book, and it has to be semantic markup-based when you decouple the text from the view by omitting explicit pagination) for free.
- The_Colonel 3y agoHTML is also semantic. It also has a good standard, its support is omnipresent, is extensible, actually supports tables etc.
- qwerty456127 3y agoIsn't Markdown meant to be lightweight HTML with shortcuts to declutter it visually? Afaik it even is considered officially correct to use HTML tags in it when necessary.