An Observation

[Seumas Mac Uilleachan]

I was commenting on the Gruber comment, not making a real-world 
observation. I have used a few different implementations and the results 
are consistent except for the edge cases. However, there ARE edge cases 
where results are not consistent with common expectations (typically 
from users who do understand the rules), and are indeed discussed in 
great detail on this list. Most users here would prefer that the 
expectations took precedence. Gruber's comment indicates otherwise.

The "compalints about Mr Gruber" seem to me to be more along the lines 
of users wanting extra features (like tables, footnotes, etc) or wanting 
edge cases made more consistent, with Mr Gruber being quite content with 
the status quo and not even bothering to comment on the feature requests 
or edge cases. Since he is deemed to be the BDFL of markdown nothing 
therefore changes. Implementers then have the conuntrum of either 
literally following what Gruber's markdown does or following what common 
expecations want. Added features become individual enhancements with no 
central authority. In essence, each implementation becomes a fork of 
markdown. Forks tend to diverge, making interoperability problematic.

Personally, I am quite content with the current feature set of markdown, 
which probably explains why I have a very low posting rate here. I don't 
use tables or footnotes very often so I don't miss them but I can 
understand the need for them.

On 16/05/11 11:16 PM, David Parsons wrote:

>

> On May 16, 2011, at 7:42 PM, Seumas Mac Uilleachan wrote:

>

>> On 16/05/11 10:18 PM, Dr. Drang wrote:

>>> A bit of Kremlinology: [...]

>

>>> lol

>>

>> A) The rules produce inconsistent results.

>

>     In rare edge conditions, yes.  But the operative word here is

> *rare*;  if they happened all the time, people would be screaming

> much more loudly that they are now (and, really, it seems that a

> lot of the complaints about Mr. Gruber not continually futzing with

> the language is coming from the obnoxious open source belief that

> if people aren't continually tweaking the code it's dead.)

>

>     As an implementer, I'm *very* happy that the language has become

> stable; this means I get to spend my coding time fixing bugs instead

> of chasing the latest "I got bored, so I rewrote everything" release.

> (something I can't say for some of the extensions I try to support,

> which have silently morphed since I copied them.)

>

>     -david parsons

> _______________________________________________

> Markdown-Discuss mailing list

> Markdown-Discuss at six.pairlist.net

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss

>