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On Lightweight Markup Languages
Jun. 3rd, 2015 05:40 pmThere is an eternal, elemental conflict between transparency (being able to look through the markup and see the content) and clarity (being able to tell WTF the markup is supposed to do). It is a law of nature, and will never be resolved.
The reason Markdown succeeded in the first place was because, in a particular limited domain of objects, it struck almost the correct balance between the two, bringing the speed and comfort of transparency without sacrificing enough clarity to completely ruin you. RST and ASCIIDOC failed to limit their domain, and their hubris made them fucking unusable. (Try reading through the source of a Sphinx site sometime, Jesus H.)
The way to use Markdown without hurting yourself is to recognize when you're about to exit that domain and resort to HTML or a templating language of some kind. (Also, ignore Gruber's spec and try to stick to a pessimistic subset of Commonmark.)
The reason Markdown succeeded in the first place was because, in a particular limited domain of objects, it struck almost the correct balance between the two, bringing the speed and comfort of transparency without sacrificing enough clarity to completely ruin you. RST and ASCIIDOC failed to limit their domain, and their hubris made them fucking unusable. (Try reading through the source of a Sphinx site sometime, Jesus H.)
The way to use Markdown without hurting yourself is to recognize when you're about to exit that domain and resort to HTML or a templating language of some kind. (Also, ignore Gruber's spec and try to stick to a pessimistic subset of Commonmark.)