First-time user woes

[Duke Normandin]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Waylan Limberg wrote:


> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Duke Normandin <dukeofperl at ml1.net> wrote:

> > On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, David Kendal wrote:

> >

> >> On 4 Mar 2011, at 17:26, Duke Normandin <dukeofperl at ml1.net> wrote:

> >>

> >> > Should I be redirecting the output to a file, like:

> >> >

> >> > markdown --html4tags convert-this.txt > convert-this.html

> >>

> >> Yes.

> >

> > Cool! Thanks. BTW, does it say as much in the Markdown site? Am I

> > blind in one eye, and can't see WAS out of the other? :)

> >

>

> Markdown outputs to 'stdout', which implies that basic command line

> constructs will work. I imagine that if you're calling markdown from

> the command line, it is assumed you know and understand this. However,

> if the docs nowhere say markdown outputs to stdout, then that may be

> an oversight.


Maybe so ...


> On the other hand, markdown is generally considered a library first

> and a command line script second. In other words, it is primarily

> meant to be called from other code (cgi script, web framework, etc)

> and the command line feature is a helpful afterthought. That means

> documentation of the command line features may suffer a little. In my

> personal observation, this applies to all the various implementations,

> although some are better than others.


I didn't get the impression from the Markdown site that Markdown was
"generally considered a library". That's good to know! Thanks for the
heads-up!
--
Duke