Metadata syntax (was Universal syntax for Markdown)

[Fletcher T. Penney]

I think the idea of metadata boils down to three perspectives:


1) I don't want it/need it/care about it  --- get rid of it

2) I want something easy to write, easy to read, and fits with the Markdown philosophy of as little markup as possible to accomplish the job ---even if not quite as powerful (e.g. MultiMarkdown)

3) I want something powerful/flexible, even if it looks like computer code at the top of my document (e.g. lunamark)


Before there can be a unified standard, there has to be a unified philosophy (just like the rest of the "standards" debate on the list).


My philosophy, and therefore that of MMD, is #2 above.  I obviously have more markup than plain Markdown, but I feel that my "feature to markup" ratio is as good or better than Markdown (obviously a personal opinion, not a fact).  The metadata functionality is pretty powerful, fails gracefully when run through plain markdown (if you remember the extra two spaces at the end of lines), but does have some limitations.

I reiterate one of my previous posts - if we want to have any sort of consensus for the Markdown derivatives, the first step is agreeing on a philosophy for those standards.  Individual variants can still have their own features, but we would need agreement on the core.

F-


On Sep 18, 2011, at 11:53 AM, John MacFarlane wrote:


> +++ David Sanson [Aug 17 11 23:09 ]:


<snipped for brevity - please see original posts>

--  
Fletcher T. Penney
fletcher at fletcherpenney.net