18 ms·

Standard Markdown

• kennethfriedman 12y ago
  would love to hear Gruber's take on this.
  • RexRollman 12y ago
    I would like to think that they at least approached him.
    • codinghorror 12y ago
      We did -- no response to the current spec after a week of waiting for a reply. A much earlier lengthy email response from Gruber around 11/2012 evaluated each of the changes Stack Overflow and GitHub made to Markdown one by one (there were some he agreed with) and essentially said "ambiguity is a feature" at the end. We disagree about that.
      • cnbuff410 12y ago
        Go for it. Time will prove which side is correct.
      • MBCook 12y ago
        But why use basically the same name? If you want to make a fully specified version why not give a slightly different name instead of just "Standard X"? Using (basically) the same name strikes me as somewhat hostile given the views Gruber has expressed, and likely to cause confusion to end users.
        • danielweber 12y ago
          The problem is that once Gruber embraced ambiguity and encouraged lots of people to make whatever they want and call it "Markdown," it's hard to say "no, no, you can't call this one specific thing Markdown." IANAL.
          • albedoa 12y ago
            He's not telling them they can't — he's saying they shouldn't. Those are very different things.
          • deleted 12y ago
            [deleted]
          • jfb 12y ago
            It's less like he's saying they're wrong and more like he's saying they're rude.
          • erroca 12y ago
            There's a difference between a fork (flavour), and just claiming ownership, which is what this is.
        • phpnode 12y ago
          Markdown has outgrown Gruber's stewardship, "ambiguity is a feature" is not an opinion I can get behind. Calling this something other than markdown would be more confusing for end users. It is markdown, standardised.
          • jdmichal 12y ago
            > It is markdown, standardised. I would avoid this wording. I would instead say: It's a flavor of markdown. The flavor is heavily documented. The flavor's name is "Standard Markdown".
          • MBCook 12y ago
            "I don't like his position so he should lose his ownership". Lovely. My problem with the name "Standard Markdown" is I don't think it's going to be clear enough, I think people will think it's the same thing as Markdown (which it's not), under the theory that "non-standard" would have an obviously different name such as "Lisp Markdown" or "Japanese Markdown". If they had used a word other than "Markdown" I wouldn't have a single problem, I would cheer them on. I don't see a real benefit in this name to anyone, but I see serious downsides.
            • bmm6o 12y ago
              > "I don't like his position so he should lose his ownership" That's certainly an unbiased translation :rolls eyes:. If you want to have a good-faith debate, you should avoid tendentious re-writes of your interlocutor's arguments.
              • MBCook 12y ago
                > "ambiguity is a feature" is not an opinion I can get behind You clearly don't like his position. Be he has explicitly chosen not to make a specification, he's had years and numerous requests. From what I've seen/heard John Gruber likes that it isn't formalized with a spec. So if a group of people, especially a large group with 10s of millions of users (at a minimum) decides to write a spec and name it "Markdown" over Gruber's wishes it sounds like trying to take ownership from him. My phrase was glib, but I don't think it's that far off from many of the comments expressed here.
        • munificent 12y ago
          > But why use basically the same name? Because it communicates the right thing to users >90% of the time. If you learn the language specified here and then go write some reddit comments or file a GitHub issue using that language, it will do what you expect. The few places where it doesn't you probably don't have an intuition about anyway. If you treat "markdown" as an improper word describing the language and not some sort of proper "brand name" that describes provenance, then what they describe here is "markdown".
          • MBCook 12y ago
            > If you learn the language specified here and then go write some reddit comments or file a GitHub issue using that language, it will do what you expect. It would do the same thing if all those groups (since they seem to be onboard) had decided to call it TextMark or CommentAscii or some other new term. As long as they all use the same term it would be fine. But instead they're basically trying to strong-arm redefine Gruber's name, and they'll win because they're bigger. It's in terribly poor taste. This will actually make things worse too, because they've invented another standard. People will see 'old' Markdown sites that don't work like 'new' Markdown sites ('Standard' is too subtle) and ascribe it to a bug in 'new' Markdown. They haven't avoided confusion in the way a new name would have done very quickly. Same confusion, acting like a jerk to take over someone else's creation. High class there.
        • alphang 12y ago
          I've certainly struggled with the layout of exact stuff in Markdown ... but there's something about this name, the writing on the index.html, and the constant use of the unofficial file icon (which i'm really not a fan) that kind of irks me. Maybe it's the spirit of the naming? Maybe it's because of the effort to _brand_ this? And perhaps the developer-centric tone of the writing versus the writer-centric tone of the original spec? I'm not sure.
          • djur 12y ago
            From the original Markdown doc: "HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown’s formatting syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain text." The lack of support for complex or exact layout was intentional. As I read it, if you want your Markdown documents to be rendered a specific way, you choose/configure/write a Markdown parser that renders it that way (possibly with the assistance of an additional stylesheet). If you need a particular extension for a task (tables, syntax-highlighted code blocks) you can use an parser that supports them. And if you need specific HTML elements, you can use them inline. The way I read it, Markdown is intended as an _input format for markup tools_, designed to be both legible and meaningful as plain text. Any meaning that can't be explicitly encoded in the ASCII format, including the specific HTML tags used to render a given construct, is outside Markdown's scope and should probably be stored in a more structured format.
      • wglb 12y ago
        I vote for using a different name.
      • smackfu 12y ago
        It kind of sounds like you have disagreed over the same things for five years now, and finally got enough names on your side that you decided you didn't need to get agreement and could just take over the name. Not cool.
        • happyscrappy 12y ago
          Gruber should make a question and answer site called Standard StackOverflow.
          • oblio 12y ago
            And it should take over if StackOverflow's service is crappy.
        • libria 12y ago
          Whatever. I really respect Gruber for his original design of markdown, but am puzzled by his destructive behavior in this. While he was sitting on his hands, a lot of us have been annoyed at creating a markdown doc in one app and finding it looks funny in another client. This spec is long overdue. He can still choose to be caustic and demand a rebrand, but it'll only delay the inevitable replacement of the original markdown.
          • math0ne 12y ago
            But wont that always be an issue because vendors will have to disable features selectively. I see the merits of a standard from a developer standpoint but I don't think hat solves the problem you are describing.
        • jrochkind1 12y ago
          Gruber has been okay with people writing and distributing their own markdown processors, with whatever variations they want. The difference here is that they wrote a spec for the variation they plan to implement? That somehow makes it not cool? Or just that they're calling it "Standard Markdown"? Could the dispute be avoided if they called it "A Standardized Markdown", or "Standardized Flavor of Markdown" instead? There are many markdowns, and Gruber likes that, fine. Other people would like to standardize and make compatible implementations. Nothing's stopping people who disagree from continuing to ignore the standardized spec. But where' the logic in saying "you can release whatever markdown variations you like, as long as you don't try to make different implementations compatible with each other."
      • ihuman 12y ago
        But isn't the ambiguity what allows you to make your own version? Edit: In case what I am writing is misunderstood, I am not trying to be snarky or negative. I am just curious.
        • Marazan 12y ago
          I think most people would prefer there wasn't any ambiguity in the first place. No ambiguity, no 500 different things called XMarkdownY
          • RubyPinch 12y ago
            has there been any standardization efforts which didn't end up with implementation-specific changes everywhere? admittedly the worst example for such a topic, but, we still don't have a situation where all browsers agree on all renderings, and all of them still don't follow the spec, and in some areas, they don't plan to. I can see html requirement being a pain-point for anyone implementing standard markdown.
      • unclebunkers 12y ago
        Going to be honest, I'm not cool with this, and will not support it under this name. I'm probably a minority, I almost always am, but it will impact how I view and support the products built by this team. Not cool with me gentlemen, not cool by half.
        • npizzolato 12y ago
          You can't have your cake and eat it too. If ambiguity (and thus different implementations) is a feature, then a natural side effect is that another group of people can come along and say "this is ridiculous, let's define a new implementation we can all support". And if you're doing that, it's pretty obvious to call the effort to produce a standard implementation Standard Markdown. Unless you think Github-StackOverflow-Reddit-flavored markdown is a better name :)
          • unclebunkers 12y ago
            Yea, usually out of respect and general human decency, the inventor of a technology gets to retain rights to the name and the names usage. Very disappointed.
            • callum85 12y ago
              I think you've got it backwards. It would be less decent to give it an new name and forget its origins. Calling it Standard Markdown waives any claim to have created anything new. It makes it clear this is merely an effort to standardise the language Gruber famously invented. It gives all credit for origination to him.
              • unclebunkers 12y ago
                I'm 100% certain I don't have it backwards. Gruber is still alive, so you can ask him if he wants it the same name. Oh, they did; he said no. Not honoring the original inventors wishes is in direct opposition to propriety. It will cause me to file trademark against any open source project I don't want to lose rights to. Seriously, how am I the only one who doesn't think this is f^#&^%d up?
      • budu3 12y ago
        I agree with Gruber. Ambiguity is a feature. It allows every implementer (leanpub, github et al) to add their own idiocentricities while staying true to Gruber's "spirit" of Markdown.
        • libria 12y ago
          Can the same be achieved with a common core (spec) + 3rd party bolt-on extensions?
        • grayclhn 12y ago
          Everyone is still free to implement their own version. But it seems like many of the people behind the biggest implementations would rather agree on a standard.
        • josteink 12y ago
          They still can. They can be as ambiguous as they want. They just wont be able to advertise it as compliant with "Standard Markdown". I don't see a problem.
  • phren0logy 12y ago
    He said in his podcast a few weeks ago that he thought it was unnecessary, as the ambiguity allowed for different flavors with different uses. I'm assuming the reference to the Yankees being the best team in baseball is directed at Gruber. During that podcast, Gruber encouraged that group to consider not calling what they were doing Markdown. Something to the effect of, "Come up with your own thing, and see if it catches on." He noted that the ambiguity is probably what has made Markdown useful to such diverse groups with different needs, and should be preserved.
    • smackfu 12y ago
      I remember listening, but wish I could find the episode again. Do you remember which one it was?
      • swilliams 12y ago
        I believe it was the 2 parter with Marco Arment. Either this one: https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2014/07/19/ep-088 https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2014/07/19/ep-088 or this: https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2014/07/19/ep-089 https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2014/07/19/ep-089 Just several hours to sift through :)
      • peterhajas 12y ago
        It's the episode of The Talk Show with Marco Arment as a guest.
      • Marcus316 12y ago
        It's starts at about 1:15:00 in Episode 88.
      • philoushka 12y ago
        Listen to it on Overcast.fm "Atwood's crusade" https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527 https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527
        • 12y ago
  • Scorponok 12y ago
    I assume the baseball thing was his requirement to sign off on this, or an attempt to placate him...
  • gregbarbosa 12y ago
    Is this the same group of people he brought up on the recent episode of The Talk Show? The group that wanted to essentially take away the original credits (or something to that effect) from him?
    • jdbernard 12y ago
      I don't think anyone wants to take credit away from Gruber. My understanding is that they want to move the language forward. More people than just Gruber use it now. I haven't been following him much recently, but for a long time his attitude was, basically, "You can't change anything without my approval but I'm not going to invest any time in this." The way he has handled Markdown's success over the last few years has not engendered my respect.
      • maxerickson 12y ago
        Why is it important that the new thing have the old name? Reducing user confusion is one possible answer, but I expect if you are going to argue that, you end up with the name not mattering because most of the users aren't even aware of it.
        • callum85 12y ago
          People are definitely aware of the name. It would be a complete non-starter to have a name that didn't reference "markdown" in some way when the project is an effort to standardise markdown.
          • maxerickson 12y ago
            There are certainly a large number of people that are aware of the name, I'm not disputing that. My point is that there are tens of millions of redditors that aren't. I would also guess most light users of Stack Exchange sites are not very aware of the name. For all those people, I don't think the name matters. Also, the heavier, more interested users will likely not be disrupted much by a different name.
  • smackfu 12y ago
    From the podcast linked below, my rough summary of his position: Essentially, that while a spec that cleared up some ambiguity might be useful and is a task he might undertake someday, calling one thing "true markdown" and other flavors not wouldn't be useful. If Github wants to have a version of markdown that supports code better than a blog engine needs, good for them.
    • brian_c 12y ago
      So basically follow the example of pre-standards browser-specific HTML features?
      • smackfu 12y ago
        To be clear, "Standard Markdown" is only trying to address the ambiguity of the syntax. Sites are still going to implement Standard Markdown plus some ad hoc extensions, so it will still be the same practically in that regard.
      • adamlett 12y ago
        When you are considering how two things are alike, don't forget to also think about the ways in which they are not. Unlike with HTML, content producers who write Markdown, don't need their documents to be parsed correctly by many different engines. They only have to target the one they are using.
      • lmm 12y ago
        Which was where most innovation and the good parts of modern HTML came from?
  • bellerocky 12y ago
    He tweeted what his take was: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/262287246953164800 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/262287246953164800
    • solutionyogi 12y ago
      Just FYI: That tweet exchange is from two years ago.
  • macrael 12y ago
    Here's a reply he made to a twitter conversation about it: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507305771265454080 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507305771265454080 It definitely seems shitty to take the name of his project without his permission, regardless of how righteous they think the cause.
• dang 12y ago
  Which post should we keep, this one or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264718, which has the story? Edit: since this thread has all the discussion, we'll keep this one.
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    I find the linked blog post more informative, personally.
  • phpnode 12y ago
    the codinghorror one is more interesting imho
  • wglb 12y ago
    I vote for this one and not for the horror one.
  • Thrymr 12y ago
    This one seems to have one, there are no comments at the other HN story. The link it references is: http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-flavored-markdown http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-flavored-markdown
  • yxhuvud 12y ago
    Why not both? Both provide value. It is not the first time this happens. It might be a good idea to merge the comment trees and let both links show at the top of the page for these cases.
  • sp332 12y ago
    So the voting buttons are just for decoration now? It's the number of comments that determines which stories get the front page and which are buried?
    • dang 12y ago
      No, but in the case where there are two posts covering the same story on the front page, it's certainly a factor. If one url had been obviously better than the other, we would have kept it and (if necessary) assigned it to the thread with more comments. In this case, neither url was obviously better. That's why I asked, and also why the responses were contradictory.
• jaredmcateer 12y ago
  Thanks, this has been long coming and sorely needed.
• peterkelly 12y ago
  Is there a formal grammar defined? I don't see one here. They mention peg-markdown which does use a formal grammar - or at least, multimarkdown does, which is the one I've looked at. Here's the link to MultiMarkdown's grammar: https://github.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown-4/blob/master/parser.leg https://github.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown-4/blob/master/pars... It's littered with implementation code, but with this stripped out it would make a good basis from which people can write parser generators from (that don't depend on the specific implementation details of MultiMarkdown's internal representation). As far as I'm concerned, a formal definition should be an absolute requirement for any official spec. The "spec" as presented simply looks like a large collection of examples, informally specified in prose. What's really needed is a grammar you can use for parser generators, corresponding to a schema for an object model. It's late here, I may have missed something, so feel free to correct me if if this is the case ;)
  • imsky 12y ago
    The closest Standard Markdown provides is the re2c "source" that gets converted: https://github.com/jgm/stmd/blob/master/src/scanners.re https://github.com/jgm/stmd/blob/master/src/scanners.re I agree that a universal PEG would be great, perhaps this is the project to base that grammar on.
  • codinghorror 12y ago
    definitely raise that on http://talk.standardmarkdown.com http://talk.standardmarkdown.com
    • peterkelly 12y ago
      Will do. I'm currently trying to get a project started to convert between various file formats typically used for writing/word processing (https://github.com/uxproductivity/DocFormats https://github.com/uxproductivity/DocFormats). Markdown is one of the languages I hope to add, and I've been planning to use the Multimarkdown grammar. But if I can make a convincing argument on the list for using something like this, it will make things a lot easier for everyone hopefully.
• reconbot 12y ago
  I think this is great, I'm all for extending markdown for specific situations but I think the base h1, li, and p tags should be clearly defined. It appears that most parsers could adopt most of the spec without breaking backwards compatibility. (I'm probably wrong.) There's an obvious annoyance with markdown like this, where a lack of a blank line after the headlines causes problems but only in a few parsers. I'm glad to see most of them do the right thing. http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=%23+I+love+this+stuff%0A%23%23+A+LOT!%0A-+li+1%0A-+li+2 http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=%23+I...!
• saosebastiao 12y ago
  I'm super excited that JGM (of Pandoc) is heading this and has some cooperation from Github and Reddit (both the largest users of Markdown that I'm familiar with). This is something I've hoped to happen for a long time.
  • masklinn 12y ago
    > Github and Reddit (both the largest users of Markdown that I'm familiar with). StackOverflow? (who're also on board via Atwood)
    • embolalia 12y ago
      And Atlassian, sort of. When they feel like it. BB uses Markdown, but most of their other stuff is something else entirely.
    • mark-r 12y ago
      Atwood hasn't been associated with StackOverflow for over 2 years: http://blog.codinghorror.com/farewell-stack-exchange/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/farewell-stack-exchange/ That said I'm sure he has valuable experience with Markdown and is almost certainly using it again in his latest venture.
      • codinghorror 12y ago
        Ben is listed on the site and works at Stack Exchange right now.
  • Terretta 12y ago
    Now if anyone can get the Facebook Phabricator Phriction wiki pholks to use it... They invented one just their own, differing on even the most basic things.
    • epriest 12y ago
      See https://secure.phabricator.com/T2849 https://secure.phabricator.com/T2849 for discussion.
• robotmlg 12y ago
  Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
  • Taek 12y ago
    Lucky for these guys, they seem to have some pretty powerful names behind the project. I think this will go pretty far towards becoming the single standard that everyone references.
  • alrs 12y ago
    Right now there aren't competing standards, there are competing ad-hoc implementations.
• pessimizer 12y ago
  How about a minimal set of asciidoc markup that gives people whatever warm feeling they get out of markdown, but has the benefit of being pretty consistently specified, allowing you to set variables (like multimarkdown), and allowing you to create finished documents in the same style in which you created your scratch documents? http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc-compact.html http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc-compact.html I'm probably tone-deaf on something here, because I simply don't understand the appeal of the format. edit - asciidoc talk: https://plus.google.com/114112334290393746697/posts/CdXJt6hVn5A https://plus.google.com/114112334290393746697/posts/CdXJt6hV...
  • jacquesm 12y ago
    The appeal is twofold: a lot of engines now understand it and it is (relatively) easy to write by hand. (Except for the bloody links, writing the HTML for them is much easier than the equivalent markdown, I do it infrequently enough that I always mix up the brackets or the order (or both...).)
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • pessimizer 12y ago
      I understand the herd effect - so I put it in user-facing projects that I'm working on - but I don't understand what's driving the herd. Specifically, I don't see any advantages over asciidoc and find it awful to work with. edit: I do understand this project, though. It'll get rid of the horribleness in implementing markdown, at least.
      • derefr 12y ago
        > I don't see any advantages over asciidoc Reddit uses Markdown. GitHub uses Markdown. HN (sorta) uses Markdown. Wordpress, Tumblr, and Discourse all use Markdown. If I used Markdown for my own User-Generated-Content Textareas™, people might already know it. If I use Asciidoc, I may as well be using SGML. It's just another (nice!) syntax you're forcing people to cram into their brains.
• josegonzalez 12y ago
  +1. I hope that book publishing tools (leanpub for one) also subscribe to the standard once it's been formalized/ported.
• phpnode 12y ago
  Next step W3C standard?
• Xeoncross 12y ago
  Wait, the spec doesn't even address things like tables.
  • masklinn 12y ago
    Because tables are implementation-specific extensions.
    • smackfu 12y ago
      Does the spec allow extensions?
    • remi 12y ago
      Yes, they’re part of Markdown Extra[0], written by Michel Fortin. [0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140830092621/https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140830092621/https://michelf.ca...
    • Falkon1313 12y ago
      So the standard does not provide a standard? I find the dokuwiki table syntax to be pretty simple and effective, or the markdown extra version. Don't know why none has been made a standard part of markdown yet. Seems like it must be due to backlash against table-based web designs of the 1990s, (which resulted in an entire generation of web developers thinking that tables are inherently evil and an entire generation of non-developers who just do things in MS Word or Excel instead because it's relatively easy to make tables).
      • masklinn 12y ago
        > So the standard does not provide a standard? A standard can be descriptive (bottom-up) or top-down (prescriptive). A descriptive standard will only check and document common-ish features to implementations. Tables are not one of them.
    • ahoge 12y ago
      So are fenced code blocks.
• p8952 12y ago
  Your Discuss button seems to be overflowing: http://i.imgur.com/8s9O3DA.png http://i.imgur.com/8s9O3DA.png
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    They're using a very odd font stack. font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, serif; I've never seen serif used as the fallback for Helvetica/Arial.
    • codinghorror 12y ago
      Yeah I didn't notice that, let me fix! Also: PRs welcome! http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/improvements-fixes-to-the-homepage/75 http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/improvements-fixes-to-the...
• moeedm 12y ago
  See, there you go again. Making shit complicated for no reason.
  • angersock 12y ago
    Try making a compliant parser without an unambiguous spec--these things are "complicated" for a reason.
• pron 12y ago
  So it seems like this spec covers a minimum implementation, "basic" markdown. I think extensions to (footnotes, tables, definition lists etc.) should also be standardized, even if their implementation remains optional.
  • roryokane 12y ago
    On the discussion forum (http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/the-inevitable-markdownextra-topic/42/8?u=roryokane http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/the-inevitable-markdownex...), a project lead said they are leaving that for later: > Extensions can come later. This project has the limited goal of standardizing “core” markdown features. There’s plenty to worry about there before we go to extensions.
• smackfu 12y ago
  It seems like an obviously missing thing is a page that describes how users should write markdown, in a few sentences. Otherwise you are just going to get incorrect summaries of the spec. You certainly can't point users to the spec, which is incredibly lengthy.
  • philoushka 12y ago
    Soooo submit a pull request, then?
  • codinghorror 12y ago
    Good idea! See: http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/create-a-page-or-subdomain-for-a-simple-users-guide/120 http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/create-a-page-or-subdomai...
• Siecje 12y ago
  In the demo http://jgm.github.io/stmd/js/ http://jgm.github.io/stmd/js/ Why do <h3> tags have font-size: 100%?
  • matthiasv 12y ago
    It's because of this line: https://github.com/jgm/stmd/blob/e47d698c2cf1d24606bd2f708feed0c23a80ce79/js/index.html#L66 https://github.com/jgm/stmd/blob/e47d698c2cf1d24606bd2f708fe... But seriously, who cares?
    • Siecje 12y ago
      It breaks headings with '###'
      • matthiasv 12y ago
        But as long as the correct HTML is output it doesn't matter how it looks. I mean that's the whole idea of separating structure from representation, right?
• aikah 12y ago
  Personally the first time I used markdown was when I signed up for SO.I used to be a BBCode guy. But there are other formats, like rst.Strangely they are not as popular,despite the fact that they have a spec.
  • lmm 12y ago
    rst is harder to write; it's as simple as that.
• thu 12y ago
  Cool, was wondering if John MacFarlane was part of it (and he is). The standard implementation is in C[0]. I guess this is a good middle ground (from a social perspective, not from a technical one). This is a very nice initiative. In particular we can hope that all those markdown editors will be perfectly compatible with each others, or that any deviation from the standard will be very well approachable. [0]: https://github.com/jgm/stmd https://github.com/jgm/stmd
• RubyPinch 12y ago
  it seems weird to have HTML as a non-optional part of the spec in two separate locations, and then "Because we might be targeting a non-HTML format" it would make more sense to just have some way to dedicate a block of text to not be parsed in any form. regardless, I'm 99% sure I'm intentionally missing the point here, as I can imagine reddit's, github's, stackoverflow's, et al.'s implementations would not support html tags at all (and anything for a personal site would have less restrictions on usable html tags). So in practice, it is going to be optional to some degree for implementers. but it seems weird to have that implied, when the handling of info-lines for codeblocks is explicitly left ambiguous
• tomphoolery 12y ago
  upvoted because the test implementation is called a "dingus"
  • pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    The dingus could do with a mini reference so that new markdown users can trial "standard markdown" without having to bring up a separate reference source alongside it. Default text would be good to, perhaps with a button for clearing the box.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • mikewhy 12y ago
    This is what it has always been called http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
• ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Nicely done, and needed! But pretty much everyone I know who has used markdown has wandered into the swamp that is known as 'tables of despair'. Michael Fortin's syntax is pretty useful and quite close to the spirit of Gruber's original efforts. (who hasn't done ascii tables with | and - right?) Until tables are 'standard' I do not hold out a lot of hope for widespread adoption. That said, I really love taking it Markdown to this next level. And am moderately amused by the recurrence of the themes over time. I'm a old RUNOFF user from back in the day.
  • hayksaakian 12y ago
    I'm actually kind of happy that tables are complex With the use cases for markdown, table seem inappropriate. What I mean: tables are good at representing arbitrary data, particularly sets of data stored somewhere. Maybe it would be better to simply describe the data with json embedded in markdown and delegate representation to something else.
    • ChuckMcM 12y ago
      The counter argument is that simple tables are simple. And as silly as that sounds, a typical expository essay might easily include a 2 x 2 'table' to explain some principle (I call them McKenzie tables since every presentation from those guys seemed to include one or more). Or simple columnar data like the current price of the Macbook pro line, or any number of things that are represented easily and efficiently in a simple table. That is why I like Fortin's syntax something like: | widgets | quality level | cut-off point | :------- | :----------- | :------------ | frobs | 98% | 90% | bolts | **65%** | 70% | splangs | 85% | 80% Reads easily in text and markdown's easily as well using multimarkdown (my current go to implementation). Use your CSS to style the selectors tbody, thead, and colgroup and you're off to the races.
      • thinkpad20 12y ago
        The problem that I see with that is it makes editing a table very difficult. Sure, if you know exactly what you're going to put in a table, then it might be worth it to draw all of those lines, but as soon as you need to go and edit the content of a cell, or remove a column or something, you might have to go and edit unrelated parts to maintain your formatting. It also seems like it'd be a real pain to parse. I'm not sure I know of a better solution, except to suggest that markdown might not really be suited for tables, and it's better to just use HTML for that part.
• ilaksh 12y ago
  Does stackoverflow allow ```ruby now? I thought their thing was different. There is a stackexchange person on this, so does that mean we will be able to ````mylanguage on stackoverflow sites?
  • buro9 12y ago
    There's nothing stopping you doing that already, it just might not pretty print the output. Most of us who syntax highlight code that is supplied in Markdown use Mike Samuel's work: https://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README.html https://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README... Ruby isn't one of the languages presently supported, but if you add it then a lot of sites will start syntax highlighting Ruby.
    • ilaksh 12y ago
      Stack Overflow does syntax highlight Ruby its just a different syntax instead of ``` its like <-- language --> or something. At least thats what I remember.
  • codinghorror 12y ago
    They will if the standard is supported! Also: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/250157/could-stack-overflow-support-github-flavored-markdown http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/250157/could-stack-o...
    • ilaksh 12y ago
      I think if stack overflow supports that part then it becomes the de facto standard and if they don't then it wont. So kind of a chicken and egg thing.
• filmgirlcw 12y ago
  Yeah, I'm going to just go ahead and say that Fletcher's MMD has been my "standard" for years. Yes, yes, Github flavored is fine. You can adapt it. But since Gruber doesn't want to set a more specific "spec," I default to what I grew up on. And in this case, the last 7 years of my life have been spent writing 95% of everything I publish (keep in mind, this is how I make my living) with MultiMarkdown. A for effort though.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• 01walid 12y ago
  How a group (of whoever they are) claim they're the standard about something in nowadays without even caring about localization ? 2 years of 'complete specs' without a mention for RTL and how it should be supported/written in markdown.... A bit disappointed tbh... even though it's a nice initiative...
  • roryokane 12y ago
    What would they have to do differently for RTL languages? I thought that RTL is already abstracted by Unicode or something. Won’t something like the following just work automatically? > انا اسم [روري](http://roryokane.com/ http://roryokane.com/)
    • 01walid 12y ago
      No. It won't just work, it's even shown on your comment how awful it is. To understand what I mean, try to inspect your comment, add `dir="rtl"` to the <p> tag of the Arabic text...
  • Terr_ 12y ago
    Since when does ASCII text support RTL? I thought the whole point of Markdown was to define a mixed-mode formatting that looked OK in ASCII and could be prettified in other contexts like HTML.
    • 01walid 12y ago
      Since when Markdown was just about ASCII text ? then we can't write French, Arabic, Chinese using markdown ? my whole point is to define a syntax indication in the specs on how RTL elements should be identified when converted to say HTML. when converted, THAT element (or the whole document) would contains dir="RTL" attribute in its tag. for example, something like this: <-rtl-- Foo Bar would convert to: <p dir="rtl">Foo Bar </p> Prettifying won't help... RTL elements/document should be indicated in markdown
      • obeid 12y ago
• bpierre 12y ago
  This is really great, but I don’t understand why everything has been made privately. Following the first post [1], people were waiting for a move, and as far as I know, it was a complete silence during two years, not even a “we are working on it”. A Markdown Community Group [2] has been created on w3.org, and people have started to push some effort in it [3][4][5], but it has been totally ignored since the beginning, despite the communication attempts. Maybe I don’t have all the informations, but it looks like a waste to me, and I find it disrespectful for the people who worked on the project. All of this could have easily been avoided with a simple communication about the status of the project. [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-future-of-markdown/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-future-of-markdown/ [2] http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/ http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/ [3] http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/wiki/Main_Page http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/wiki/Main_Page [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-markdown/2014Mar/0000.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-markdown/2014Mar/... [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-markdown/2014Jul/0002.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-markdown/2014Jul/...
  • TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    They've also unfairly appropriated the name "Markdown" and declared it "Standard", which Gruber is (rightly) not too happy with.[0][1] [0] https://twitter.com/justin/status/507304506007515136 https://twitter.com/justin/status/507304506007515136 [1] https://twitter.com/markdown/status/507341395137658880 https://twitter.com/markdown/status/507341395137658880
    • joeblau 12y ago
      Ouch! He's defintely not happy, but I think there needs to be some more structure around the format. I love using Markdown, but it's annoying finding out what quirks work on different parsers. For example, GitHub supports hyperlinked images, but Designer New's comments don't. I think the spec has too many open ends and needs wrangling. I'm just not sure if this was the best way to go about doing it.
      • 12y ago
• vjeux 12y ago
  I modified the renderer to output React DOM instead of an HTML string if anybody's interested https://github.com/vjeux/markdown-react https://github.com/vjeux/markdown-react
• roryokane 12y ago
  There is a typo on the main page http://standardmarkdown.com/ http://standardmarkdown.com/, in the section “How can I help?”: “Read the spec, run the test suite, and exercise our reference impementations.” “impementations” → “implementations” I couldn’t find a GitHub repository for the code of the website itself, or I would have made a pull request. Edit: I see there is already a thread about this: http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/site-typo-s-one-to-start-with/75 http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/site-typo-s-one-to-start-...
• bachmeier 12y ago
  I don't see anything about math and in particular embedding equations via MathJax. Is it considered unimportant or did I just miss it?
• buro9 12y ago
  I'm finding some bits odd. Such as this: http://jgm.github.io/stmd/spec.html#html-blocks http://jgm.github.io/stmd/spec.html#html-blocks The tags listed are not a complete list of section elements (missing `address` and `nav`), nor the grouping elements (missing `main`), nor the embedded content elements (missing `area`, `audio`, `iframe`, `img`, `param`, `picture`, `source`, and `track`), and doesn't scratch the form elements (but yet the "HTML blocks" include `form`, `fieldset`, `textarea` and `progress`). The tags listed also include child elements, rather than just the topmost parent elements that were listed in the original Markdown syntax: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html So we have a list of arbitrary HTML elements that have been declared as "HTML blocks", some of these are not really "blocks", and some are clearly other things, and some things that perhaps should be included are not. And reading through why this list exists creates a sense that the implementation difficulty (of having to produce a balanced tree) is dictating how Markdown must now be experienced by the users. Example 99 is a great example of surprising a user by not doing what they think will happen and leaving them with a game of "Guess why it's not working.". http://jgm.github.io/stmd/spec.html#example-99 http://jgm.github.io/stmd/spec.html#example-99
  • buro9 12y ago
    It's dawned on me why this is the case. Gruber's Markdown has this goal: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosophy http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosoph... > Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible. That's it... that's the single big idea that drives the philosophy of Markdown. And how about Standard Markdown? http://standardmarkdown.com/#how http://standardmarkdown.com/#how > one of our major goals is to make Markdown easier to parse, and to eliminate the many old inconsistencies and ambiguities that made writing a Markdown parser so difficult. Markdown and Standard Markdown have very different goals. One is designed to make it easy for end users to read and write content for the web, the other is designed to make it easy for developers to parse and process content for the web. The purpose is no longer the same, a subtle shift has occurred.
    • Too 12y ago
• loup-vaillant 12y ago
  This spec is not strict enough. Okay, that came out wrong. While I understand why one would want any input to pass (web comment from non-technical users), I have experienced several failures (wrong emphasis, missing link, weird unintended brackets…) just because the original markdown.pl didn't warn me about some obvious mistake I made. We need a strict mode, where paragraphs cannot be interrupted, where fenced code blocks must end by a fence (not just the end of the file), duplicate or missing references must be signalled… That, and many other precautions could turn Markdown into a serious and reliable document format. Besides, this tolerance is complicating the grammar. I don't mind context sensitivity nor ambiguity (parser generators can now deal with both), but I do mind the sheer size. If you ask me, a formal spec (one that can be treated as a DSL and translated mechanically into a parser), should not take more than 300 lines. More than that is probably too complicated to implement, or even use.
• jamesrom 12y ago
  I never, ever, once have had a problem writing markdown on any website that supports it. This standard seems totally pointless.
  • recursive 12y ago
    I have had problems getting consistent output out of different "Markdown-compatible" document tools. I hope this defragments the Markdown landscape.
• evv 12y ago
  So instead of simply removing HTML from markdown, this spec impossibly and incorrectly attempts to include it. How frustrating..
• jader201 12y ago
  Gruber's first (that I know of) public response to this: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507305771265454080 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507305771265454080
  • rhythmvs 12y ago
    What’s Markdown™? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a Standard By any other name would smell of squeamish ego
  • tizzdogg 12y ago
    Gruber also mentioned it recently on one of his talk show episodes. I cant remember which episode, but as I recall he was not a fan of the effort at all and thinks it is not necessary.
    • DonnyV 12y ago
      The question should be why does he feel so threatened by this? Its because its a flushed out better "standard" version that everyone will use. Let the best version win.
      • chipotle_coyote 12y ago
        I'd say "annoyed" rather than "threatened," and I think it's in part the name, yes. I see a lot of "naming variants '$foo Markdown' is common, what's the beef" responses and I get that, but Standard has very different connotations from Multi- or Github-Flavored or other past versions. I'm not sure that simply naming it something else would have solved this issue, but I don't think it would have hurt to pick something more like "Formal Markdown" -- which captures the notion that you're trying make a formalized standard without explicitly saying "this is the standard." But I suspect it's also in part simply that Atwood and company never said in public "we are doing this." They just announced it as a fait accompli. Yes, two years ago Atwood and Gruber tweeted at one another briefly and Gruber said he wasn't interested in formalizing the spec. But that's not really an attempt at having a discussion, and it sure as hell isn't an announcement of a project. I think a formalized spec for Markdown is a good thing. But the way this was handled was still kind of a dick move, and I don't think it had to have been.
• kuon 12y ago
  I don't really see the point of this. Being vague is one of the biggest strength of Markdown. Markdown is being used by very different products to fulfill different requirements. Having no specification means you can inspire yourself from Markdown and just do your own thing, which is what is relevant. Markdown is being used by comments systems, issue trackers, documentation programs. Those have very different needs, and having a liberal non-specification is what helped Markdown to be popular. Coming with a new standard, not called "Standard Markdown" (which I think is very presumptuous, even for a big company) and providing new features (arranging/aligning images, variables, include, mathematic notation...) would have been much more productive. I mean, who cares of those little differences? When I edit a comment or something, I just hit the preview button (or see the preview real time). I'm not going to learn a specification, and if markdown has to look different on stackoverflow or github or <insert doc system>, so be it. Markdown is also mean for people who have no idea what a "syntax error" is, I know the specification is meant for implementations, good, but if I want to write an implementation, I want it to be fast and this kind of complicated spec is exactly what prevent me from writing something lighting fast. I'm really sorry, I don't want to insult your work (which is great), but it looks like a waste of energy to me.
  • SoftwareMaven 12y ago
    Except it sucks when I have to go to the docs for the 10 different flavors of markdown 10 different sites I go to use (assuming they have docs). I also have to spend time documenting my own site when I incorporate markdown.pl versus markdown.py versus some other markdown implementation. Markdown has become popular enough that a complete, unambiguous spec is good for end-users. If you are building a little text entry thing for your mp3 catalog app, sure, it's nothing to worry about. But when you are github and stackoverflow and google, and end-users are authoring documents, knowing the behavior matters.
    • kuon 12y ago
      Yeah, but it doesn't define how markdown will be rendered. For example, on github, to get a decent paragraph title, I must use #### (h4), on some other site that might be h1 or h2 to get the effect I want. I understand the need to define the grammar precisely, but for me Markdown is highly tighten to the site it will be rendered to. I'm not against a specification, but I feel this is a lot of work (and again I'm not saying it's badly done) that feels unnecessary. Taking your google example, they might deviate from the syntax because their comment box is too small. I really don't want to argue, it's just some feeling, it might not be rational, and by all means I'm not saying I'm right. I was expecting (and waiting for) specifications for tons of things, but not markdown.
• stevekinney 12y ago
  It appears to me that this is a blatant violation of Markdown's license. https://github.com/jgm/stmd/issues/19 https://github.com/jgm/stmd/issues/19
  • frowaway001 12y ago
    No.
  • darkarmani 12y ago
    You mean this spec is violating the license of the software? I guess they won't be able to distribute that software anymore? Did you even read the start of that license? > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met...
    • ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
      "Neither the name “Markdown” nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission." http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license
      • darkarmani 12y ago
        That license only applies to the software. What happens when you have the license revoked? You can't use the software anymore.
• pronoiac 12y ago
  If using that name seems rude, I suggest the name "MarkUp."
  • pimlottc 12y ago
    Markup is what HTML (and XML and SGML) is. Markdown was chosen as a response to that. I suppose they could just take a right turn and go for "MarkLeft" or something...
    • josteink 12y ago
      MarkRight. Markdown done right.
  • motyar 12y ago
    How about Web Markup Language? WML?
    • jarek 12y ago
      Elon gave "hyper" a good buzz recently. Could try "Hypertext" Markup Language.
• thomasfoster96 12y ago
  This sounds like a great idea in theory, but the execution seems to be a little scratchy. It sounds as though this is very much a unilateral decision from one of the many sites that use Markdown to standardise it, masked by what seems to be a call for other companies with an interest in Markdown to join. It seems a little questionable to me for John Gruber to have been ignored in this process. Afterall, he made Markdown and it probably would have been a better idea to take his rather ambiguous spec, develop it into a proper standard, and then call that version 1.0. No doubt Jeff Atwood deserves some credit for trying to initiate a standards process for Markdown, but I think he's doing it the wrong way.
  • frowaway001 12y ago
    > It seems a little questionable to me for John Gruber to have been ignored in this process. No, it's the other way around. Gruber decided to ignore everyone who tried to improve the sad state of Markdown for the last 10 years.
    • thomasfoster96 12y ago
      Yes, I was a bit wrong with that statement. Just read http://blog.codinghorror.com/responsible-open-source-code-parenting/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/responsible-open-source-code-pa...
    • riking 12y ago
      And, if we look at the list of people who were writing it, we see Github, Meteor, Reddit, and StackExchange people (plus JGM and Atwood) as the participants, which I think cover the top 3 sites using Markdown. And Jeff is using Markdown for his forum project, Discourse, so that's another chunk of users. This kind of coalition has the power of numbers to standardize on something, which is why this is so exciting.
  • oblio 12y ago
    Github, Reddit, Stackoverflow. Those look like several big sites to me (not just one). And as many people said, Gruber is not some sort of BDFL...
• edavis 12y ago
  It's amazing how similar this is already to the RSS/Atom format wars: Widely read blogger independently develops a simple file specification that addresses a real world problem. Simple file format becomes a de facto standard. Developers gripe about ambiguities in the specification. Effort to create a formal, standardized specification is launched. This new effort is publicly denounced by the original specification author.
• eslaught 12y ago
  I'm a little surprised at the level of negativity in the majority of the comments here. I understand our cultural need for criticism here, but the critics here have touched almost everything (and note that the most insubstantial of claims have bubbled up to the top of the comments here): Naming [2] [5] Closed (initial) development [1] Lack of formal grammar [3] Lack of tables [4] Just use another format (e.g. asciidoc) [6] Ambiguity is a feature [7] Can we please take a moment to appreciate the achievement here? As opposed to fulfilling our own sense entitlement? Markdown is a popular language with an ambiguous, poorly specified spec and buggy default implementation (so buggy that the vast majority of Markdown users have probably never used it, if they even know it exists). Now, we have a much more well-specified English language spec that explicitly addresses the challenges of the grammar, with a test suite that does a much better job of covering the corner cases, and much better default implementations. These improvements are by no means perfect, but they are improvements. Yes, we need a formal grammar. Yes, we need tables, and other features. Yes, the naming is unfortunate, though frankly I don't feel sorry for Gruber given that Atwood posted a public letter calling for change two years ago. Yes, these are all issues. But it is an achievement nevertheless, and let's celebrate that. And then we can get back to work. ---- More generally, I think we have issues with entitlement here on HN. Frankly, we have no fundamental right to either the original Markdown or this new version. But when posts like this come up, we hack away at them as if we had a right for better, as if the authors should be working to please us personally. We need to stop acting like we have a right to sentence judgement over what others release as open source. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8265469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8265469 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266370 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264828 [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8265299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8265299 [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266073 [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264895 [7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266121
  • tjradcliffe 12y ago
    <em>Markdown is a popular language with an ambiguous, poorly specified spec and buggy default implementation...</em> That never hurt Perl... :-) Sorry, couldn't resist. Your sentiments are well-taken. No one "owns" Markdown, and quibbling over words is unproductive. There is a concept: "a simple in-line markup language that is easy to write and maps clearly to HTML". One instance of that concept is a specific, buggy, ill-defined language called "Markdown". "Standard Markdown" is another instance of the same concept. This is the way English works: adding modifiers to words that designate one instance of a concept to designate other instances of the same concept. Getting to an EBNF grammar from the spec would be awesome, but the spec is a great place to start. All spec generation is tendentious, and it is common to have multiple people highly invested in the generation of different specs for the same nominal standard. Politics, as Aristotle tells us, is the master art. This is why.
• esolyt 12y ago
  I don't think this is an attempt to claim ownership of Markdown, but it may eventually turn out like that. Why is Gruber not included in the group?
• _pmf_ 12y ago
  For a project that aims to replace a fluffy specification with a real specification, this is not very good at all.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• mortdeus 12y ago
  Ooo, ooo I just thought of the cutuest name for this project.... xmarkdown! Get it guys? You know like XHTML... Cute right?
• neya 12y ago
  This reminds me of a similar issue that happened within the Scala community. David Polak, the creator of the Lift framework (which is used in production in many top sites), had originally worked hard to create the framework (along with others) and make it production worthy. Later, he realized that the releases of the framework he had created were happening without his involvement. But, instead of accusing the community, he said something remarkable which only multiplied my original respect for him: I never "left" the Lift community. Yes, I have other project and work in different languages. What I did was cease to be Lift's benevolent dictator for life. Lift has grown way beyond one person and the fact that the 2.5-M4 release was done without me is a strength, not a weakness. [1] Because, that's the spirit of open source. When you release something to the public, for public consumption, then you must understand that someone is eventually going to fork it up and assign it a different nomenclature, sometimes even a nomenclature that you may not like. In this case, this particular project had no standardization and a part of the community decided to just standardized it. If you don't like this standardization, then simply don't use it. Use what resonates with you. If you feel the standardization has some flaws, then fork it and fix what's wrong. IF people agree with you, eventually they will end up using your fork. It's as simple as that. What is funny is to see John Gruber who appears to be butthurt about this, when his contributions have grown negligent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8266574), inconsistent and his recent focus has been more on other (personal) things.[2] This reminds me of Luca Pasani[3], who released the much popular WURFL repository as open source in a liberal license first, then one fine day, cried foul because other people (including companies) were using it for profit (in accordance with the license), deleted all online repositories and instances of the project released under the old liberal license [4], then re-released the project with a comparatively restrictive license.[5] In my opinion, releasing something for open, public consumption means you have to develop an honest mindset of accepting that other people WILL benefit from your creation eventually. If you don't get that right, then open source is probably isn't for you. (And crying foul later, is a double standard, if you do) [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12424617/comparing-lift-with-play2#comment20481903_12428316 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12424617/comparing-lift-w... [2] like writing controversial Apple articles at daringfireball. [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Passani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Passani [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WURFL#License_update http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WURFL#License_update [5] http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/09/169216/wurfl-founders-fire-off-dmca-takedown-against-fork http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/09/169216/wurfl-founders...
• sherjilozair 12y ago
  A very useful addition to markdown would be the ability to put anchor links, and "open in new tab" links. Both of these are not link defaults, but are perfect examples of common cases that should work nicely. Markdown is often used for one-page webpages due to its simplicity, and thus anchor links become important in this usecase.
• izietto 12y ago
  One extension I love is for HTML definition lists (I'm actually the author of [this comment][0]). They are great for instance with changelogs; consider this: ## ChangeLog 1.0.2 : Update README : Update of the script comment in order to reflect the README 1.0.1 : Fix minor bug 1.0.0 [0] http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/the-inevitable-markdownextra-topic/42/20?u=mdesantis http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/the-inevitable-markdownex...
• otikik 12y ago
  I like this. Kudos to everyone involved.
• archagon 12y ago
  This is an arrogant power play that's lost me a lot of respect for the perpetrators. They clearly don't respect Gruber enough to honor his intent for the language. And don't give me that "it's successful in spite of its ambiguity" nonsense. A standard inevitably makes people find ways to work "within the rules" while doing crazy stuff that the language is not intended for (like many people in these comments). Markdown's lax specification ensures that people honor the intent, not the implementation, and keeps it immediately understandable and grokkable. Also, it's genericized? Are you kidding me? They could have called it anything else, but they just had to go for full ownership of the spec. I hope all the indie App Store developers that Gruber is friends with shut this "standard" out.
• happyscrappy 12y ago
  Atwood could have been more of an ass and called it Vanilla Markdown.
• serencial 12y ago
  Honestly, I don't see the point of all the negative comments. If there's something you can improve, why you can't do it? Even when big Markdown backers are taking the lead. I guess what pissed Gruber is the naming stuff.
• Fastidious 12y ago
  Markdown is dead. Long live kramdown! :-)
• gregoire 12y ago
  On a related note, Marked and Ulysses (two applications that use Markdown) recently launched TextBundle [0], a package file format that allows to include the images referenced in a Markdown file with the Markdown file itself. I would be interested in what the team behind Standard Markdown thinks about this problem, it does not seem addressed in their spec (but it might be beyond their scope). [0]: http://textbundle.org/ http://textbundle.org/
• phren0logy 12y ago
  The most surprising thing in here is the ire toward Gruber. Even if you disagree with someone who writes a piece of software, they don't owe you anything. You use and benefit from their work, and you are angry when they don't agree with you? What a bunch of whiny, entitled nonsense. Gruber has stated he wants to keep it ambiguous. You may disagree. But Gruber owes you nothing, and you are in his debt if Markdown has been useful to you. Draw inspiration from his project and make your own.
• igl 12y ago
  markdown is awesome! Why ruin it by design by committee? Standard Markdown will go down as fascist markdown!
• gravicle 12y ago
  Here is my take on this: http://spinhalf.net/omg-markdown/ http://spinhalf.net/omg-markdown/
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• johnx123-up 12y ago
  Just for the sake of context http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common... , project is now http://commonmark.org/ http://commonmark.org/