Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comments? - RivieraKid
======
oftenwrong
HN does not often add new features. I assume this is the main reason HN has
not added Markdown.

I would prefer that HN continues to NOT support Markdown. After all, the
entire point of Markdown is that it should be readable in its unprocessed form
[1]. Therefore, Markdown obviates its own utility: Why not just present the
source text of a comment as-is? Why confuse non-savvy users with behaviour
like collapsing line breaks [2]?

[1] "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it
as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should
be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up
with tags or formatting instructions."
[https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfir...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936)

~~~
RivieraKid
First, the processed form is more readable than the unprocessed form. And
second, when I write a comment here in Markdown, what is displayed is worse
than unprocessed Markdown. For example lists:

\- One \- Two

------
forgotmypw17
As implemented in most places, Markdown does many unexpected things to user
text. e.g. changing numbers in lists, breaking some urls, breaking textart.

~~~
jolmg
In Gitlab's Markdown, I don't know how to insert a backtick in between
backticks. I tried escaping it with a backslash, by doubling it, etc. It seems
impossible to put a single plainly-visible backtick.

HN could be said to have a very minimal Markdown, with it's support for using
asterisks for adding italics. We can't have plain asterisks, because of that,
though.

I rather have no Markdown than Markdown that doesn't have escaping facilities
to allow expressing all plaintext.

~~~
ahuang1018
Actually you could insert a backtick in between backticks in GitLab's
markdown. ref:
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/82722)

------
troydavis
If one commenter wanted to get attention for their comment, they’d overuse
large headings and bold. A lot of Markdown’s value comes from consistent use
throughout a document (here, all comments).

------
warpech
I guess it's for historical reasons. Markdown wasn't really that popular
before GitHub made it popular. Hacker News is older than GitHub.

------
satvikpendem
HN does implement Markdown to some extent, such as lists, _italics_ , quotes,
code blocks, etc.

~~~
dragonwriter
HN doesn't support lists or quotes at all, and I don't think the italic or
code block support is exactly markdown compatible, though it's similar.

~~~
satvikpendem
I can make lists just fine:

\- One

\- Two

    
    
      And quotes

~~~
dragonwriter
The thing you are calling “quotes” is a code block, and the thing you are
calling lists is no formatting at all, just HN presenting exactly the text you
entered.

~~~
satvikpendem
People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile
users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes
on this site.

With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again
the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist.

~~~
dragonwriter
> People use code blocks as quotes quite often, much to the chagrin of mobile
> users, but nonetheless, their being used as quotes make them de facto quotes
> on this site.

They aren't markdown quotes, which was the claim made. “People on the site use
HN’s almost-markdown code blocks for quotes” is true. HN supports markdown
code blocks and markdown quotes is not; it supports code blocks in a way that
approximates markdowns, and has no separate quote functionality.

> With regards to lists, as I can create them, that's all that matters, again
> the formatting doesn't need to be special, it just needs to exist.

But...it doesn't. HN allowing you to type text and not transforming it at all
isn't support for markdown (or any other kind of) lists. The claim upthread
was that lists were another markdown feature that HN supported. It does not.
Now, it's true that markdown’s markup for lists is itself a manner commonly
used for presenting lists in unformatted text (a very big part of the idea of
markdown is that it follows convention for plain-text presentation so that it
is readable and recognizable without processing), but _not_ recognizing or
transforming a markdown feature isn't support for that markdown feature, even
if by the nature of markdown the absence of transformation still leaves the
intent recognizable.

