let us not discuss that here

[bowerbird]

i sent jakov a reply backchannel.
take it all backchannel please.

here's a post i made elsewhere,
but i think it's relevant here too,
in case anyone has any feedback.

-------------------------------------------------------------

call me crazy if you like, i don't mind, but...

there's no need to plan for "20 to 40 years".

by then, there will be no need for "markup",
"markdown", or "mark-all-around-the-town".

it's not that difficult even now to "figure out"
fairly unstructured text, so once we humans
make slightly smarter programs and accept
a responsibility to write in a structured way,
with no room for ambiguous interpretation
-- which really isn't as hard as you think --
we'll be able to leave explicit markup behind.

it will be "zen".

i say this because i was able to ascertain
the structure of project gutenberg e-texts
without too much difficulty in most cases.

likewise, you can scan a print-book and
do o.c.r.. on the scans, and get output
which also reveals the structure of the
underlying text in a straightforward way.

if you want to see that on a large scale,
examine google books, which offers stuff
which it ascertained, like header markup
and a respective linked table of contents.

that stuff certainly wasn't "marked up" in
the print-book, but it just isn't that hard to
"figure out" either, from the data available,
if you ponder it a while, and apply yourself.

in fact, i wouldn't be the least bit surprised
if google can already grok unstructured text,
because they have the firepower to solve it.

heck, i'm merely a garage hacker, and i have
achieved much of the solution all by myself.

this "light-markup" stage is just a little path,
meant to show us the way to a bright future.

-bowerbird

p.s.  but since i'm here now anyway,
i might as well tell you "part 5" is up:
>   beyond markdown -- part 5 -- shining a spotlight on sections and 
headers
>   https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-5-4902097723b0