
Markdown is the Future of Writing - vinhnx
http://nerdplusart.com/markdown-is-the-future/
======
chappi42
Markdown is a mess. Gruber refuses to take care and now there are a ton of
slightly different dialects because the original draft is clearly lacking in
some respects.

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.

~~~
sausman
Go for it. You could call it Topdown.

~~~
bebna
Or Markup. Oh wait.

~~~
chappi42
;-) But why not 'just steal' the markdown name? Afaik Gruber used the name for
a software and not for a standard... A committee (codehorror, Github, marked,
discount, Pandoc people etc.) could e.g. buy the markdown.org domain and start
publishing new standards. I'd love to have a core which is the ~same what we
have now and then extensions. The core could (very slightly) develop if
necessary.

It's not nice to take over names but why not? It's a pity to see Markdown
rotting along since years :-(

------
jmduke
The easiest counterargument possible:

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.)

~~~
adregan
Markdown is great for writing on the web, but it's not the future of writing.
I love markdown, but all word processing is still so restrictive compared to
earlier forms of composition, and HTML is still a horrible medium for poetry:

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](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...](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-
essay/237880)). 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...](http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/text/Apollinaire_Calligrams.pdf)).
Heck, for that matter HTML can't even maintain line breaks or distinguish
stanzas (should they be p tags?).

------
eksith
The key takeaway : "Markdown lets you think about what you’re writing instead
of how it looks"... which is arguably a bit difficult when you're manipulating
raw HTML and a bit... detached on WISIWYG.

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.

~~~
ghayes
The issue with Markdown is the syntax is pretty horrible. To create a link,
it's [ title ] ( url ), which is incredibly unintuitive. I'm still never sure
if italics are ____or * *. Heck, if I want a single newline, that 's not
possible. I am all for using a markup syntax; I just wish we had a better
option than Markdown specifically.

Additionally, Medium is specifically, heavily concerned with "how it looks" as
that is one of the main selling points of the blog software.

~~~
dchest
A single newline is possible, and it's the most horrible thing in Markdown:

    
    
       When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown,
       you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
    

[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p)

~~~
koralatov
Agreed. It's an appalling kludge, and I bet most of these ``distraction-free
writing environments'' (vomit) don't highlight the extra trailing spaces in
any way.

I have the following in my .vimrc which at least makes them visible:

    
    
      set listchars=tab:»\ ,eol:¬,trail:·
    

Of course, having them visible doesn't change the fact that they're an
appalling kludge and I still tend to use <br /> instead.

------
Roboprog
Yet, somehow all the WYSIWIG editors beat out nroff and WordPerfect.

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.

------
brianberns
Markdown seems to be part of the retro/hipster trend, along with flat UIs,
8-bit video game music, fixie bikes, and Pabst beer. As someone who actually
lived through the 1980s, it's amusing to watch you young cats reinvent my
youth.

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.

~~~
Roboprog
But, I _like_ 80 column lines. Er, I guess that doesn't make sense with
proportional fonts :-)

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.

------
voyou
The paucity of imagination in this post is depressing. Markdown isn't the
future, it's the past. I mean that literally - markdown is a formalization of
a set of kludges to approximate formatting when using the technology of 1970s
dumb terminals. Is that really the best writing system we can come up with?

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.

------
andmarios
“Markdown lets you think about what you’re writing instead of how it looks.”

Usually this is the [type of] phrase we use to describe LaTeX.

~~~
ternaryoperator
Really? That's not my experience with LaTeX at all: I (and others like me) am
constantly looking up commands, special characters, parameters to commands,
remembering to close braces, etc. And when things don't work as I or they
expect, finding the problem is a nightmare. LaTeX is great for typesetting --
that is, when you _want_ to focus on how it looks.

~~~
andmarios
The problems you describe are a sign that you still haven't learned LaTeX. I
never claimed there isn't a steep learning curve. But these problems haven't
to do with the appearance of your document.

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.

------
chmike
Which markdown is he talking about ? There are no standard and each editor has
it's own rules. Bullet lists? How do you make sub bullet lists ? Use tabs ? No
tab on iPad. Tables ? There is a Markdown dialect for that.

Markdown has limitations and needs to be standardized.

~~~
GuiA
There is a reference syntax respected by all scrupulous editors [1]. It's a
decentralized standard, sure, but it's compact and logical enough that it's
unequivocally respected across the web.

[1]
[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax)

~~~
Marazan
Gruber's Markdown syntax has a bunch of ambiguities in it.

~~~
chmike
Yes. Thank you to point it out. That is what I meant by standardization. An
effort to identify and sort out these ambiguities or missing features like how
to escape * *, etc.

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.

~~~
Marazan
Not only that but the "reference" implementation on the website has bugs in it
that Gruber has fixed but for some reason he hasn't updated the file. If you
know what to search for in the Markdown mailing list you can find his latest
version but it is insane that it's not on the page.

------
justinator
Before markdown (for me), there was Perl's POD. [0]

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.

[0][http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html)

------
icedog
As everyone has noted, good writing shouldn't be bogged down with syntax, yet
the author proposes people ditch editors/bars and just write it directly? If
you want that, just switch to source view and write. Otherwise, I'm quite
content with working in a lightweight editor with keyboard shortcuts.

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.

------
libovness
The premise here that "Markdown lets you think about what you’re writing
instead of how it looks" should be questioned.

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_.

~~~
zenojevski
One of the staples of aesthetic beauty in typography is coherency. Markdown
allows to reach that easily.

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-...](http://indesignsecrets.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/01/story-editor.png)

------
useflyer
Markdown is like Vim -- sure, it might speed up your output, if that's your
sole focus. And its not meant to be adopted en masse.

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.

~~~
philjackson
> relatively intelligent person by trade

Interesting trade. Your place doesn't need someone of mediocre intelligence do
they?

------
quasque
The idea the author is illustrating reminds me of this even simpler, no-
distractions, plain text editor
[http://writer.bighugelabs.com/](http://writer.bighugelabs.com/)

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.

------
koralatov
Telling me there's an 30-second overview of Markdown at the end of this post,
but not providing an anchor link to get there, and another to get back, is
really sloppy. It's probably as a result of Markdown's ``intentionally really
simple'' syntax. I write in Markdown all the time and _I_ certainly don't know
how to create an anchor link within it.

------
computeloops
The upcoming Ghost[1] blogging platform/tool has side by side post editor that
supports Markdown on left and visual formatting on right. This should make it
easier to learn Markdown syntax.

Also, I believe, Markdown is the best option for generating formatted content
on touch based devices.

[1][http://tryghost.org/features.html](http://tryghost.org/features.html)

~~~
est
two-column layout is so last decade. Why hasn't anyone invented inline
markdown editor yet?

Your current cursor line should be markdown source in plain text, other lines
rendered HTML.

~~~
guynamedloren
Prose.io has kind of a hybrid markdown editor (I think it's WYSIWYM?). It has
markdown syntax highlighting that happens to look similar to the final output,
though the markdown tags are still displayed. They also have a toolbar, which
is used like a regular WYSIWYG toolbar, but generates mardown tags.

It's pretty neat.

------
afsina
I think Markdown is mediocre. Putting too much meaning to white spaces is not
exactly a bright idea for a markup language IMO.

------
peterarmstrong
At Leanpub we bet the whole startup on Markdown, so we certainly agree! We
love Markdown since it means that writers focus on writing, not on
formatting...

------
donniezazen
It baffles me that WordPress doesn't have Markdown by default.

~~~
eksith
I think WP has a lot of historical reasons for sticking with an HTML based
WYSIWYG. Also, they've spent a lot of time and effort customizing TinyMCE.

If you like WordPress but want to keep things simple, you may like Habari :
[http://habariproject.org](http://habariproject.org)

------
toolslive
Suppose my writing includes tables, what do I do then?

~~~
awsm
Markdown has tables: [https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-
Here-C...](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Here-
Cheatsheet#wiki-tables)

~~~
toolslive
first sentence there: "Tables aren't part of the core Markdown spec, ...."
Anyway somehow, padding the columns with spaces to align the pipes isn't
workable. If I change the width on 1 line, the whole table has to be modified.

Face it: in the current millennium, for serious writing, there's _still_
nothing better than Latex. (which is a bit sad)

