Markdown development

Seumas Mac Uilleachan seumas at idirect.ca
Sun Mar 21 11:03:27 EDT 2010


On 21/03/10 06:13 AM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:

> * Seumas Mac Uilleachan <seumas at idirect.ca> [2010-03-21 00:45]:

>

>> I hear constantly about needing "Gruber's blessing" for any

>> overhaul or changes to Markdown. Why?

>>

> In case you are referring to my own recent mail, I never said it

> needs *Gruber*’s blessing specifically. What it does need is one

> central voice. If you think it doesn’t, then ask yourself why all

> of the reimplementations have added their own features, yet none

> of them have copied each other.

>


I wasn't referring to you specifically. I keep reading here about how
the lack of input from him is what is causing the perceived
fragmentation in Markdown implementations. All I meant to say is that
Gruber seems to have lost interest in Markdown development and we just
need to move beyond needing his blessing.


> Except that several of them have copied Markdown Extra. As it

> happens, Michel Fortin had some blessing from Gruber on several

> of his efforts. Coincidence?

>

> No one needs permission or blessing to fork Markdown. Many people

> have done it.

>

> But that’s the point. To get more than Just Another Fork, it neds

> to have weight of voice to bring all the other forks together

> behind it.

>

>

>> 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.

>>

> The problem with tables as I see it is as above: I think that

> tables fundamentally cannot be both easy to edit and easy to read

> within the constraints of plaintext.

>


It depends on what you are trying to do. If you want a simple
multi-column list of corresponding text such as:

Position Team P GD PTS
1 Man Utd 31 46 67
2 Arsenal 31 40 67
3 Chelsea 29 42 64
4 Tottenham 30 26 55
5 Liverpool 31 19 52
6 Man City 28 17 50
7 Aston Villa 29 17 50
8 Everton 30 6 45
9 Birmingham 30 -3 44
10 Fulham 29 0 38
11 Stoke 30 -6 36
12 Sunderland 30 -6 34
13 Blackburn 29 -17 34
14 Bolton 31 -20 32
15 Wigan 31 -30 31
16 Wolves 30 -24 28
17 West Ham 30 -14 27
18 Burnley 31 -33 24
19 Hull 30 -35 24
20 Portsmouth 30 -25 13

It should be possible to do without having to use html. For more complex
tables (eg multiple lines in spanning cells, tables within tables) you
are getting into a different kettle of fish - I can see requiring html
for that.

> Regards,

>




More information about the Markdown-Discuss mailing list