Adding additional output formats for Markdown?

[John Gruber]

Fletcher T. Penney <fletcher at alumni.duke.edu> wrote on 07/26/05 at 8:27 pm:


> Also, I added a metadata feature to allow you to include metadata at  

> the beginning of the file, that could be used in format-specific  

> ways.  I tried to stick with the Markdown philosophy of looking like  

> an email/plain text...

> 

> For example:

> 

>      Title: A Sample File

>      Authors: Fletcher T. Penney

>                      John Doe

>      Copyright: 2005 Fletcher T. Penney


I think you're mixing apples and oranges here. You're building both
an extension to the Markdown syntax *and* you're building a
publishing tool.

It's a fine idea to build a publishing tool based on plain text
files, where each file has a defined structure of one or more
metadata headers at the beginning, followed by a blank line,
followed by Markdown-formatted text (or, in your case,
Markdown-plus-extra-stuff-formatted text).

But I think it's a mistake, or at least an unnecessary conflation,
to include the headers as part of your syntax itself. The
Markdown-ish syntax should only apply to the prose itself.

Most of my use of Markdown is in Movable Type, but there's a reason
why there's nothing MT-specific in the Markdown syntax itself.
Whereas in your project, the syntax is implicitly tied to your
specific publishing model.



> Please let me know what you think.  (Also, John (and anybody else) if  

> I have incorrectly used any code, or stepped on toes - please let me  

> know!!!)


What you've done is perfectly acceptable given Markdown's licensing.
I don't really think it's a great idea to fork the formatting syntax
in the ways you're proposing, but I don't have a problem with it
either.

-J.G.