Recap syntax ideas for Markdown?

[A. Pagaltzis]

* John Gruber <gruber at fedora.net> [2005-04-24 04:50]:
> 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

I think they are equally detestable for different reasons. :-)


* John Gruber <gruber at fedora.net> [2005-04-24 04:55]:
> A. Pagaltzis <pagaltzis at gmx.de> wrote on 04/20/05 at 6:41 pm:
> 
> > Thinking about it, it might be a solution to use a backslash
> > here. `x^(a + b)` comes out as `x<sup>(a + b)</sup>`, but
> > `x^\(a + b)` comes out as `x<sup>a + b</sup>`.
> 
> No, because that's a totally different use for backslashes than what
> Markdown supports now. The rule now means "treat the next character
> after the backslash as a literal". That's all it will ever mean.

Good point.

I am mostly thinking out loud here, and nowhere close to
satisfied with any of the propositions so far (including my own).
The whole sub-/superscript issue is mired in so many fiddly
little edge cases and concerns that finding a good solution is
going to be difficult.

Nevertheless, as I said elsewhere, I think it’s really important
for Markdown’s success, at least in the technical communities.

Eg. I am writing a web-based clinical trial register for our
University right now; I would love to use vanilla Markdown for
trial summaries, but very simple sub-/superscripts like
`g/mm<sup>3</sup>` are so common that I can’t very well leave
them to HTML.  :-/

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle