

Show HN: Ditto – Markdown documentation system - chutsu
https://github.com/chutsu/ditto

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tomasien
This is great! I'm building our docs using Aglio right now and it's great -
this seems similar but with some interesting differences. Really good to see
more options out there!

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lulle
I don't understand all the fuzz about Markdown. Doesn't people realize that it
exists other much more powerful lightweight markup languages like AsciiDoc?

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JoeAnzalone
I've never heard of AsciiDoc, but I'd say the biggest advantage that Markdown
has is its ubiquity. It's used by GitHub, StackOverflow, Reddit, and even
Tumblr has an option for it.

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Turing_Machine
Also the fact that there are multiple (and good) client-side Markdown
libraries while stuff like AsciiDoc generally requires server-side rendering
(and the associated server load and round-trip penalties).

Unless I'm missing it, there's no pure client-side AsciiDoc?

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chutsu
[1] seems to be an AsciiDoc render on client-side, though have no idea if it's
any good though...

[1]: [http://asciidoctor.org/news/2013/05/21/asciidoctor-js-
render...](http://asciidoctor.org/news/2013/05/21/asciidoctor-js-render-
asciidoc-in-the-browser/)

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Turing_Machine
Yeah, hard to say without a live demo. Also, downloading an entire Ruby
interpreter in JS seems a little on the heavy side. If you were going to go
that route, might as well use texlive.js and get a full-blown LaTeX system.
:-)

Cool nonetheless.

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dangoor
Does Google crawl this documentation? I know they have some JS support in
their crawler, but is it enough that it would actually index a docsite built
with this tool?

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chutsu
Not sure Google would be able to index the docs, since they are in markdown
format. But I'm not an expert in how Google index the pages.

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Ben-G
No, google doesn't. I've built a similar solution for the Cocos2D
documentation that is going to be released soon. I've added a php server
component to deliver HTML snapshots to google crawlers for that purpose.

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ryanSrich
Almost looks like Slate Docs[1].

1\. [https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)

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johnohara
I've used both Multi-Markdown and Pandoc in past projects so I was intrigued
by the associated live demo. Was it generated using Ditto?

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chutsu
Yep, essentially ditto. :)

I would like to add that nothing is technically generated* they. The markdown
files are rendered on the fly using a Javascript Markdown parser. The layout
is simply HTML5 and CSS, with a dash of jQuery to make the buttons work.

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chutsu
Sorry guys I had to change the name because mdoc is already used by other
programs. I changed it to `ditto`.

New Link: [http://chutsu.github.io/ditto/](http://chutsu.github.io/ditto/)

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skue
I assume you searched and discovered that _ditto_ is also a BSD command for
copying files, which is included on all Macs?[1]

This conflict may not be as confusing as the original name. I gather from the
docs that you never invoke your version of ditto from the command line?

[1]:
[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/ditto.1.html)

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chutsu
... Atleast it doesn't clash with the established documentation system mdoc.

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james2vegas
Yeah, because there aren't any documentation systems called mdoc already, at
all.

[http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/mdoc.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-
pages/man7/mdoc.7.html) [http://www.mono-project.com/Mdoc](http://www.mono-
project.com/Mdoc)

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chutsu
alright, no need to be a smart arse, I wasn't aware of those tools.

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dang
Yes, that comment was uncivil and broke the HN guidelines. It should have just
neutrally pointed out the other tools.

This reply also breaks the guidelines. Please don't reply to incivility with
incivility on HN. It's hard not to, but doing so only makes things worse.

~~~
chutsu
Sorry, got it.

