A reminder of the original design goal of Markdown - my personal thoughts

[Mark Smith]

@ 21:44 on 3.9.05, Fletcher T. Penney wrote:


>I realize that just because additional features are added

>does not mean that I **have** to use them...


[...]


>I would like to see Markdown remain true to it's original

>intent.  A plain text syntax for structured documents that

>reads **AS IS**. It's this simplicity that makes Markdown so

>attractive to me.



>The final word is John's, but I would like to voice my

>support for simplicity and elegance.  That's what drew me to

>Markdown, and where it's true strength lies.


[...]


>Otherwise, I envision myself (and other "purists" if there

>are any) creating a "Markdown Lite" that removes any

>additions that don't fit the original plan.


Point taken on the whole (Markdown needs to stay elegeant and legible in its input form), but I don't follow your progression from conceding that you don't have to use "extras", to arguing for a "lite" fork. I think that producing side projects is a good way to damage the coherence and elegance of the syntax. Better IMO to add in those things necessary for Markdown to become a sufficiently complete "writing for the web" syntax, than to have a bunch of side projects containing a subset of the full syntax. Its not as if its likely to turn into a behemoth like Docbook after all.

Also 0.02,

mark.