Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by jfkebwjsbx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

jfkebwjsbx

> Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it.

That is not true anymore. CommonMark is the formal spec everyone follows now, including most major sites out there.

> If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets?

Well, yes. Markdown is super easy to remember.

> LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas.

On top of CommonMark you can add extensions to render LaTeX just fine (like MathExchange does, for instance).

View on HN

> That is not true anymore.

GFM, ExtraMark, MultiMarkdown, MarkdownExtra, Gitlab, Taiga, Showdown, Markua, CommonMark, RMarkdown, etc., etc.

I can promise you, there will be more flavors and extensions in the next 20 years. And if I'm still alive then and we don't invent anything drastically different from keyboard input, I'd probably still be using Org-mode. Among thousands of others.

GFM, Gitlab and others you list are CommonMark plus extensions, which is what I said.

What is the problem? It is like saying JSON is useless because YAML exists, or that ISO C, C++, Fortran, IEEE 754, etc. are all useless because compilers and chip companies implement extensions.

You're still comparing just one aspect of Org-mode with Markdown. You're trying to convince me as if I was a pro-photographer and you'd tried to convince me that .jpeg is a fine format and everyone uses it and it's more popular, even though I'd still prefer RAW. Using .markdown is not appealing for me because .org allows me to do way more. If you're not convinced, then perhaps you don't need it. But don't expect me and thousands of other users of .org to switch, we'd be like: "Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about". No offense.

Actually, YAML is probably worse than JSON, but JSON is really crappy compared to EDN. It's unfortunate that JSON has become the lingua franca for services, because it's really a stunted, primitive thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com