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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 mor

by 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.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      He owns an ambiguous text formatting system? He didn't invent the notion of simple ASCII-character based formatting, and he didn't write a spec. Plus this spec explicitly deviates from his implementation, so it's not the same obviously. The reasons that he didn't write a spec after requests is very likely post-hoc rationalisation, behind the simple reason that writing a spec is not a fun task.

by phpnode 12y ago

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.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    He owns an ambiguous text formatting system? He didn't invent the notion of simple ASCII-character based formatting, and he didn't write a spec. Plus this spec explicitly deviates from his implementation, so it's not the same obviously. The reasons that he didn't write a spec after requests is very likely post-hoc rationalisation, behind the simple reason that writing a spec is not a fun task.