> modern languages like Markdown Markdown was created in 2004. From the creator: > ... the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the f

> modern languages like Markdown Markdown was created in 2004. From the creator: > ... the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. Email goes back to 1965, though I suspect Markdown's influence stems from the more widely adopted email usage of the 1990s. I'm not sure if I'd call Markdown "modern". Quite popular though! > Part of LaTeX's success was the absolutely beautiful documents it can make with nothing but a personal computer. I'd say that was TeX's success, with LaTeX bolted on later to greatly improve TeX's extensibility. Keep in mind, there are a number of TeX-centric implementations beyond LaTeX. For example, my fork of NTS, called KeenType, is a pure Java version of TeX that can typeset beautifully and has at its core Knuth's original TeX files. I specifically avoided integrating LaTeX. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/main/resources/base https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenType/tree/main/tex/src/mai... My Markdown text editor, KeenWrite, uses KeenType to preview math in documents. https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/screenshots.md#equations https://github.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/blob/main/docs/scree... When exporting to PDF, KeenWrite uses ConTeXt to typeset the final document. ConTeXt being another TeX-based system. This is the reason why KeenWrite only uses TeX: to give users the ability to choose what TeX flavour to use for typesetting the PDF. https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page