Knut Melvær, Thoughts On Markdown
As I add progressively more structure to the ‘data’ that backs this website — more strictly defining relationships between documents — it makes sense to consider what the constraining effects the use of any given markup format has on my ability to encode (and subsequently, decode) document structure, intra-document relationships, etc.
Knut makes a pretty thorough summary of markdowns defects, his thoughts about it being “a hassle to parse and validate, even with great tooling” echoes my same feeling.
I agree that block centric editing experiences offer a solution to many of markdowns painful limitations, but it’s an evolution that must be pursued carefully, I love the accessibility of plaintext.
I’m exploring this same space in my own projects. Relevant proposals:
- SEP 13: Switch to a more reasonable source markup language
- SEP 42: Expose Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
— Knut Melvær, Thoughts On Markdown