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Or use something like strapdown and let the client handle rendering.

https://naereen.github.io/StrapDown.js/

When I clicked that link I saw a flash of unstyled content, so that's immediately worse than HTML.

My point was that if you count the time spent looking for the perfect renderer, HTML is faster and easier to write than Markdown unless you're writing a book. You just added another option someone has to spend time evaluating to the pile.

There is no need to look for the "perfect" renderer. That reminds me of the authors that won't write unless they have the best notebook, pen, etc. Just write your content and throw strapdown on it. Who really cares if there's a flash of unstyled content?

The strapdown website works surprisingly well with Javascript disabled & is less than 50KiB excluding images. It does take (just barely) perceptibly longer to load than a traditional site.

But I've generally seen sites using this strategy to be a lot more bloated and slow, so please be considerate of that if you can.

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