Is there anyone would like to hold a standard organization of Markdown syntax?

[Paul Wilson]

> If held, the ORG need a concil to discuss standard, and a website to

> publish standard. I think most of the author who implemented markdown

> converter in any language could be the concil member, not only the

original

> author (Because he has not been maintaining the syntax for so long time.).


What impact would you expect (or require) this to have on the current
varied Markdown
implementations? I'm not sure that creating a bureaucracy in this manner
would help
all that much - yes, you could perhaps evolve a standard after substantial
discussion,
but what next?

The current implementations serve a purpose for the authors, and the fact
that they
are all somewhat different is a reflection of the use that the authors put
them to. A
new standard would either (1) be a subset of all the existing
implementations, or (2)
a combination of all available options.

(1) is not going to work for those who use existing conversion tools and
rely on the
features that your standard doesn't support. Why should they change what
they need
just because a committee says so?

(2) is, frankly, going to be a mess. Your committee would have to choose
between
different syntax for very similar features, and that's going to alienate
some of the
development community.

The likely outcome is (3) a supported feature list, more than minimal, less
than the
total. Somewhere between (1) and (2) above. And then, what about those who
really
want features not on your committee's list?

I have some sympathy with what you're trying to achieve, but I don't think
that a
committee (which will inherently have no power) is the answer. I'd be
interested to
hear other opinions though.

Regards,
Paul
-- 
"Software - secure, cheap, quick - choose any two"
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