Markdown is the Future of Writing
nerdplusart.com
nerdplusart.com
Just last week wanted to use GFM, they introduced a new newline style. Or maybe not? In gollum it doesn't seem to be working and then there are breaking lines with two spaces. Or not? It's a desaster.
Some group should take over the markdown format definition.
It's not nice to take over names but why not? It's a pity to see Markdown rotting along since years :-(
But if I would go for it, I would call it 'Markdown' and try to redefine it, hehe.
NB. MakeDoc was already 4 years old when Markdown was born.
Good writing doesn't need syntax. Sinclair and Joyce and Fitzgerald and Twain didn't need italics or heading tags: just like structuring a post as a list is a sign of structural weakness, designating something with a header tag is admitting defeat, is admitting "Hey, look at this, this means something is happening over here."
(I love Markdown, and use it daily.)
Hannah Weiner used to manipulate the page in her typewriter for great effects in the 70s and 80s (http://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/weiner_indians.pdf). Charles Olson called the page an open field in 1950 (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-essay/23788...). Our linear text flow doesn't allow for the kind of poetry that Apollinaire was making in the early 20th century (http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/text/Apollinaire_Calligrams.p...). Heck, for that matter HTML can't even maintain line breaks or distinguish stanzas (should they be p tags?).
Markdown allows sophisticated ideas to fall into text with a very simple syntax. I don't know of any other system that allows this except just plain text.
Edit: Hmm... looks like agreeing with the article isn't popular for some reason.
Additionally, Medium is specifically, heavily concerned with "how it looks" as that is one of the main selling points of the blog software.
When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown,
you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
I have the following in my .vimrc which at least makes them visible:
set listchars=tab:»\ ,eol:¬,trail:·
How about any WYSIWYG editor? The simplest syntax is no syntax.
For me, this is huge. I take all my notes for all my classes (save classes that require odd symbols such as math) in markdown, because by it's nature it guides my notes into a very nicely structured format. Once I have my content and structure, I can build differently styled documents for all of my different use cases: viewing my notes on kindle, reading them on computer, or printing them.
Markdown's really powerful, and I love using it.
Personally, the trick to writing with a word processor is to not waste too much time on the formatting, and just write. Also, learn to use the "sytles", just like you use CSS in an HTML file. I first learned to do significant writing in a WYSIWIG editor using Samna/Lotus Ami (accent on the i). Then Word, then Open/Libre Office. All of these have style lists. Use them! Don't waste time clicking on all the fonts, sizes, spacing, etc block after block.
The "Styles" menu seems to be one of the best kept secrets in Word and similar word processors.
I'm not saying Markdown is a bad idea, but I'm perfectly happy using the rich UI provided by a word processor when I write. Next thing you know, someone will claim that 80 characters max per line was a great idea, and there will be a little iPhone app that rings a bell when you get to column 75 so you can hit the carriage return in time. Non-skeuomorphically, of course.
Still, fill the page width, but use snaked columns if the page is wide or the font is small. I guess that's kind of like an 80 column rule.
Clearly, it's not. One obvious improvement would be a system with the same semantics as markdown which presented these semantics using the standard typographical conventions everyone knows (italic for emphasis, larger text for headings, etc). A further improvement would be a more carefully thought through and richer semantics than the rather arbitrarily-chosen subset of HTML that markdown currently supports.
Usually this is the [type of] phrase we use to describe LaTeX.
Also you seem to miss the point of LaTeX. Of course you care how your documents look, this is one of the main reasons to use it. But you are smart enough to know that there are two parts in creating a document. The first is the content, this is your part, this is where your expertise lies. So you write and give some general instructions about the structure of your writings. The second part is the typesetting and this is LaTeX's work.
A common pitfall is trying to use LaTeX as MS Word.
Markdown has limitations and needs to be standardized.
I'm a fan user of Markdown, but I'm also frequently frustrated because it could be made so much more powerful and efficient while preserving the same initial spirit.
But Gruber was childish about it:
https://twitter.com/gruber/status/261650083689426945 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/262287246953164800
Simple to pick up, does what it says on the tin, easy to hack in, "Do What I Want", for things missing.
The tools for it are a little all over the place, but, "Turn this into HTML" (pod2html) works, and works well for documentation.
Can you write whole books with it? People do - I believe many of the Perl books put out by O'Reilly are written in a POD dialect.
Frankly, I prefer to format my text with HTML anyhow. Markdown is easier on the eyes, but it has limited function and is just another level of separation between what I write and what you see.
Who says that the content of the writing is necessarily so much more important than how it looks? There's a reason that books are meant to look nice - we enjoy the look and feel of them. Likewise, I enjoy reading things on certain blogs - e.g., The Verge, Medium, Grantland - because they look really great and it's a great reading experience.
I'm almost tempted to think that it's the opposite - superpowerful WYSIWYG is the future of writing. End users will get to create amazing multimedia experiences. For better or worse, writing will be freed from being just about words.
This is also why so many Word products look so amateurish, or downright tiring to read: differences in spacing, font, color, all these make for an awful end result which is also annoying to maintain[1].
All in all this is akin to provisioning instead of scripting: you declare _what you want_ (a pull-out quote) instead of _how to do it_, letting the compiler take care of the rest.
The downside of markdown is that it is a two phase compose/preview system, which has been resolved with dual panes up to now. But it is not a showstopper, especially considering that professional copywriters already compose stories separate from presentation[2].
[1]: Yes, I know that Word has _styles_. Which are kind of similar in intent to markdown's #, >, *, even though they are not always semantically significant, and they also include presentation.
[2]: InDesign's story editor: http://indesignsecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/story-...
I'm a designer and relatively intelligent person by trade, and I have a difficult time with markdown. It requires me to have a guide open, to be able to write. No "normal folks" I know can decipher markdown.
The trick is to make styling easy -- not to make styling an afterthought. The writer, writing on Medium, should recognize this.
Interesting trade. Your place doesn't need someone of mediocre intelligence do they?
It works really well for me when just trying to get thoughts out into words. Then it's just a case of pasting it into a 'proper' editor later to work on the finer editing, formatting, and suchlike.
Also, I believe, Markdown is the best option for generating formatted content on touch based devices.
Your current cursor line should be markdown source in plain text, other lines rendered HTML.
It's pretty neat.
If you like WordPress but want to keep things simple, you may like Habari : http://habariproject.org
Face it: in the current millennium, for serious writing, there's still nothing better than Latex. (which is a bit sad)