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Knut Melvær's Thoughts On Markdown
Markdown in all its flavors, interpretations, and forks won’t go away. However, it’s important to look at emerging content formats that try to encompass modern needs. In this article, Knut shares his advice against Markdown by looking back on why it was introduced in the first place, and by going through some of the major developments of content on the web. – Thoughts On Markdown
An interesting read. Not sure if it is an unbiased history, but it seems fairly comprehensive – at least as far as you can be without mentioning Textile. Personally, though, I still of Markdown as a niche product for techies – I don’t know anyone non-virtually who uses it.
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Re: Knut Melvær's Thoughts On Markdown
michaelkpate wrote #332786:
seems fairly comprehensive – at least as far as you can be without mentioning Textile.
‘It wasn’t the first simplified syntax on the planet, but it was the one that gained the most traction over the years.’
His tidy nod.
I still [think] of Markdown as a niche product for techies – I don’t know anyone non-virtually who uses it.
I still think websites are for techies and similar tinkerers. We all know what happens when mom and pop want a shop for their garden gnomes and cutting boards.
Overall I agree with the author, though he’s kind of late to the discussion about structured (component) content not tied to html, even though he is still referring to a web-technologies scope and talking to the web crowd.
Technical communicators have been wrestling this since their fields began (e.g. OASIS open standards), and it’s a battle cry in big tent content strategy, or at least it was 12 years ago. They would get annoyed by html tunnel-vision, and even more so by mention of alternate syntaxes. Many folks and speakers I knew in the CSF community were consultants to large orgs on matters of structured content management and omni-channel distribution (all digital and print channels) from a single pure-text data source. My grad instructors at the turn of the millennium, like Bob Boiko, were all over this stuff. It has evolved since then, certainly. (I don’t even recognize that OASIS site anymore.)
But it’s so easy to be wrapped up in the ‘web’ facet only, as Smashing Mag is, and everyone here, too, likely. The article is probably a timely piece in that space, or at least is a good reminder than web isn’t the only channel in town and syntaxes like markdown are at best a convenience to a niche crowd using small niche tools.
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Re: Knut Melvær's Thoughts On Markdown
michaelkpate wrote #332786:
I don’t know anyone non-virtually who uses it.
Fountain is a derivate of Markdown and is used as a screenwriting syntax. It deviates slightly from Markdown but works well as a structured markup language for it’s particular use case: one that has lots of own conventions but also completely open narrative structures.
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Re: Knut Melvær's Thoughts On Markdown
jakob wrote #332796:
Fountain is a derivate of Markdown and is used as a screenwriting syntax.
That reminds me of one I saw years ago for academic writing. I’m not sure this is the same one but similar idea, ScholarlyMarkdown.
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