I appreciate OP's ideas about how this project is compared to Streamlit?
Where I think Mesop shines is that you get a lot of flexibility, just by writing your UI in Python. For example, Mesop has an out-of-the-box [chat component](https://google.github.io/mesop/demo/), but if you need to customize it, you can actually just copy the [chat.py file](https://github.com/google/mesop/blob/main/mesop/labs/chat.py) and customize it however you want.
In comparison, Streamlit is great to get started with, but once you're trying to do some complex customizations, you'll often need to write your own React/TypeScript component.
I think the other thing is that Mesop has a [different philosophy for building UIs](https://google.github.io/mesop/blog/2024/05/13/why-mesop/) (e.g. based on functions) which results in a distinctly different developer experience. This is, of course, subjective, but I think the Mesop approach scales well as your app grows (e.g. thousands of lines), which even internal tools and demos oftentimes do.
Oh, but it does, it's just plaintext with classic “[squared](circle)” convention: clickable inline (references) following [annotated clauses]. We can read the term, and click the ref.
Markdown's point is if plaintext is supported, so is Markdown.
Including the squared circle for inline links.
[^1]: As in functional requirements, is serving to convey the markup intent in a non rich text rendering.
The underscore makes your text worse to read, IMO. Same with the MD anchor syntax.
HN supports italicizing by wrapping an expression with asterisks *. Why insist on a foreign standard?
HN commenters use the [{i}] notation all the time for footnote referencing. Which can be used for links, declutttering the main text.
Why add a ^?
^ means superscript, as footnote numbers are in publishing, but more importantly, https://github.blog/changelog/2021-09-30-footnotes-now-suppo...