Recap syntax ideas for Markdown?

[John Gruber]

A. Pagaltzis <pagaltzis at gmx.de> wrote on 04/20/05 at 6:27 pm:

> However, I think a better proposal might be ^_ as the subscript
> marker and another _ as the closing delimiter. That rendering
> invokes more of an association with the intended effect: `H^_2_O`
> as opposed to `H^^2^O`. If you actually want an emphasized
> superscript, just put a space in there: `x^ _y_^` – this should
> be special cased to drop that space.

That's a possibility. I can see the intuitive argument for the
syntax, that the `_` implies "down".

But on the other hand, I think 

    H^_2_O

looks rather noisy. I just wonder how much better that reads than

    H<sub>2</sub>O


> (On a vaguely related tangent, I still think Markdown would have
> been better off to not waste underscores on emphasis. Asterisks
> work well enough for that purpose, and underscores could have
> been put to use for other syntax.

But everybody who uses underscores for emphasis thinks the same
thing about the asterisks.


> I also think it is **hugely** fortunate that slashes are not
> interpreted as italics or emphasis, since that would have made
> Markdown much less useful to many a /usr/bin/geek...)

I never really gave that serious consideration.

-J.G.