Textile vs Markdown

hcgtv · 2016-09-15 07:50:57

Hi,

Since moving the repository to GitHub, Markdown appears to be our new favorite text-to-HTML conversion tool.

Markdown is nice, but I have 10 years of Textile ingrained into my daily routine, now you want me to learn something new because we couldn’t get GitHub to support Textile.

GitHub not supporting Textile is one thing, but Textpattern the project, drinking the Kool-Aid is quite another.

If this project, that brought Textile to the world, is giving up on our creation, then the future is bleak.

Honestly, I could give a shit what GitHub or all the cool kids are doing, this here is Textpattern!

Boycotts, picket signs, put up a damn fight at least.

Bloke · 2016-09-15 08:22:00

Petition GitHub to keep it. I’d sign it!

In my mind, it’s not exactly much overhead to allow a filter that interprets markup and makes HTML, even if it’s not as popular as others. They could permit BBCode if they wanted, it’s one library away. Drop it in, game on. They don’t even have to promote it much or supply docs if that’s what they’re worried about. It’s not like they’ve even taken Markdown lock-stock, they’ve tinkered with it to make Github-flavoured-Markdown.

Github dropping support for Textile doesn’t make sense to me.

Textpattern dropping support for it doesn’t make sense to me, either. I love Textile.. mostly. I tolerate Markdown. I despise BBCode.

But adding support for other filters to Textpattern does make sense to me, and that’s what we’ve done. Opens it up to more people who already know Markdown, or have blogs in BBCode or whatever the hell other systems there are out there. It smooths migration.

See this discussion and in particular this post on Textup for my take on a way out of the whole debacle.

hcgtv · 2016-09-15 09:00:04

Bloke wrote #301506:

See this discussion and in particular this post on Textup for my take on a way out of the whole debacle.

Late to the party as usual ;)

Adding Markdown to Textpattern is fine by me, but I’m not going to go quietly into the night in regards to GitHub dropping support for Textile. And they’ve flavored Markdown to their liking, as have other implementations, there’s no freaking standards for it.

Textup sounds great, reminds me of “I don’t know when, we’ll get together then, Dad, ya know we’ll have a good time then”, as in finding the time.

Who did we contact at GitHub about dropping Textile?

planeth · 2016-09-15 09:30:36

hcgtv wrote #301509:

Who did we contact at GitHub about dropping Textile?

+1

Bloke · 2016-09-15 09:38:02

hcgtv wrote #301509:

Who did we contact at GitHub about dropping Textile?

I think Phil did. You’d have to ask him.

hcgtv · 2016-09-15 10:00:00

Bloke wrote #301513:

I think Phil did. You’d have to ask him.

Paging Dr. Phil ;)

Spent the morning looking at this issue, and I’m going to go with Bitbucket for my repos:

a) I can have free private repos, then flip a setting and make them public.
b) They support Textile in their wiki.
c) They support Textile in their READMEs.
d) GitHub can kiss my Ass.

I’m not petitioning for Textpattern to leave GitHub, this is clearly a personal decision on my part.

Bloke · 2016-09-15 10:13:51

Bitbucket’s alright. I use it for the private repos thing, as I’m too tight to pay GitHub for the same privilege. They’re fairly close in terms of functionality, though I prefer the Issue tracker on GitHub, and like the way they allow Releases to be bundled.

hcgtv · 2016-09-15 11:13:13

Bloke wrote #301518:

Bitbucket’s alright. I use it for the private repos thing, as I’m too tight to pay GitHub for the same privilege.

Yeah, I don’t want to pay for a service that I can get free somewhere else.

Git is Git, I’m running it on Debian Jessie in a VirtualBox VM, that’s how I’ve learned how to use it.

jakob · 2016-09-15 15:11:34

There’s gitlab too. It’s github-like, offers unlimited private repos and also supports textile.

Bloke · 2016-09-15 15:23:10

jakob wrote #301535:

There’s gitlab

I’d forgotten about that, thanks for the reminder. Meant to sign up yonks ago; have made amends now. No repos yet though!

philwareham · 2016-09-15 15:26:09

We are absolutely 100% staying on GitHub – that is not up for debate. Seriously! It’s taken enough time to build up a steady flow of contributors and moving to Bitbucket (or wherever) will kill that dead. I certainly won’t be contributing anymore if we move off GitHub.

Anyway, they are not dropping Textile in the main GitHub site, just on Jekyll hosting (although they could quite easily decide to drop it from main site too at some point). FWIW I have changed various repo README files to Markdown because other sites that hook into GitHub (such as the NPM site) expect README’s to be in Markdown format.

I am also stripping Textile from the pophelp files that we plan to include bundled with 4.7 releases, in favour of standard HTML. That is because I don’t want (or see a reason) for them to be tied to a particular text filter.

Which leads me to a subject that is up for debate: We need Markdown to ship as a core part of Textpattern NOT a plugin. I’m happy for Textile to stay as the default setting (which you can change at install time or afterwards in preferences to Markdown if you wish). New dev users will expect that, as will more and more end users who have grown up with Markdown.

Bloke · 2016-09-15 15:31:13

philwareham wrote #301538:

We are absolutely 100% staying on GitHub

Absolutely.

Anyway, they are not dropping Textile in the main GitHub site, just on Jekyll hosting (although they could quite easily decide to drop it from main site too at some point).

And probably will unless someone stands up and says we still use it.

I have changed various repo README files to Markdown because other sites that hook into GitHub (such as the NPM site) expect README’s to be in Markdown format.

A very good reason.

I am also stripping Textile from the pophelp files that we plan to include bundled with 4.7 releases, in favour of standard HTML. That is because I don’t want (or see a reason) for them to be tied to a particular text filter.

Also fine by me.

We need Markdown to ship as a core part of Textpattern NOT a plugin.

Parsedown please. Fast.

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#1 2016-09-15 07:50:57