4 ms·
"markdown is a lightweight representation of html" No, markdown is a set of standards around transforming a good looking text file into a rich format(this is u
by somat 2y ago
"markdown is a lightweight representation of html"
No, markdown is a set of standards around transforming a good looking text file into a rich format(this is usually html, but it does not have to be). The most important part about markdown is that it is a "good looking text file". If a markdown extension does not result in good looking text it has failed the one point of markdown. This is why markdown editors leave me confused, the whole point of markdown is to write a nice looking plain text document, if you are going to use a specialized editor why not use a better format?
Note that markdown is a terrible document format, with only vague presentational cues and no semantic ones. it starts to suck real quick. However, it is a great idea if you want a good looking plaintext document. People understandably keep trying to "fix" markdown with better semantic options but these by and large miss the point of markdown leaving a ugly document.
So RST may be the best thing since sliced bread, but it is not really in the same category as markdown, the plaintext for one is decidedly ugly.
- Ericson2314 2y agoSure, the markdown AST is its own thing, but no doubt its a isomorphic to an obvious subset of HTML and that's not a coincidence. Moreover, you are missing Hillel's second point, which is that there is nothing like an "abstract node" syntax which can be used for custom extensions. Lisp has (NAME ...) and XML has <NAME>...</NAME>, and these are separate from the choice of NAME. (GitHub-flavored) Markdown's one extensible thing is ```NAME ``` but this isn't so useful because the inside is unstructured text (on purpose). You want a custom node which doesn't escape everything within, so you can have more regular or custom nodes on the inside.