Markdown development

[Seumas Mac Uilleachan]

On 20/03/10 04:02 PM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:

> * Lou Quillio<public at quillio.com>  [2010-03-20 00:55]:

>    

>> Markdown's dead? Absurd.

>>      

> Obviously. That’s why no one said that.

>

> Markdown *development* is dead.

>

> (Straw men are easy to clobber.)

>

>    

>> Markdown's huge, and in the form of PHP Markdown Extra is

>> basically done. Done != dead, done == problem solved.

>>      

> Fact: the latest Gruber release is a beta.

>    

And has been for how many years now? The original markdown has not 
changed in years. That may be a good thing if it is stable, has no bugs 
or edge cases, does exactly what it advertises every time, etc etc.

But it does not, witness the constant threads on this mailing list about 
edge cases, missing features, etc etc.

Which leads me at least to presume that it is an orphaned software. It 
would certainly not be alone.

I hear constantly about needing "Gruber's blessing" for any overhaul or 
changes to Markdown. Why? It seems obvious to me that he has lost 
interest in further development. Markdown was developed to meet a 
requirement he had and I guess the current state is good enough for him. 
That is absolutely fine and I have no problem with that. If it isn't 
good enough for everyone else (or at least those who are active on this 
list) then carry on with development, call it MD2.0 or "Webtext Lite" or 
whatever you like and just run with it.

> Fact: the latest official Gruber release is missing features

> that Gruber himself uses.

>

> You can argue about whether this means “done” – I see “scratches

> my itch so I lost interest” –, but you cannot argue the facts.

>

> Personally I think Markdown is still missing a lot of fit and

> polish that could make it much (subtly) nicer still. (Eg. I’m

> tired of using `<!-- -->` lines as a crutch to force consecutive,

> separate blockquotes and lists to be recognised as such.)

>

> What it’s not missing is big constructs. (I believe tables and

> definition lists can only be done badly, and so should not be

> done at all.)

>    

The goal of markdown is readability. There is no such thing as a 
readable html table. I would argue that tables are a useful enough 
feature to include. Whether it is done badly or well is often 
subjective. At the minimum a simple table format would be important to 
me (not requiring spanning cells or complex table layouts). Tables are 
the easiest way to list corresponding values or data that they really 
should be somehow included.

I do like the way PHP Markdown Extra does tables. Unfortunately I don't 
use PHP anymore.

> Regards,

>