Markdown grew to become a core a part of how I wrote. The simplicity and suppleness meant I’d reside the dream of write as soon as, run wherever. It did result in some ambiguity, although. Gruber would most likely say that is by design. His emphasis all through the Markdown documentation is on the syntax of Markdown, not—say—the ensuing HTML. His Perl script doesn’t help HTML class names or IDs, for instance, so you may’t add these to the generated HTML. By the logic of the unique Markdown script, if you need full management over the HTML output, you then’d want to jot down in HTML.
This example is nice for Markdown customers: that’s, writers. It’s much less nice for programmers. Actually, it drives them loopy. Programmers don’t like ambiguity. It goes in opposition to a lot of what programming is about. As a author utilizing Markdown, I really like that I can choose whichever specific model is greatest suited to my wants. As a programmer, I hate that once I construct one thing I’ve to make this identical determination, which then impacts all of the individuals who use my completed product. Perhaps I didn’t help some particular extension they have been anticipating as a result of they’ve at all times used the identical Markdown parser and assume that function is out there.
If this weren’t dangerous sufficient, there are additionally some ambiguities within the syntax. For instance, asterisks are used for italics when singular (*like this*) and daring when doubled (**like this**). Up to now so good. However what ought to occur for those who write **like* this**? Ought to that be rendered like* this? Or possibly like this*? There’s no strategy to know; whoever is writing the parser has to make that call.
What’s extra, in contrast to most extraordinarily profitable items of code, Markdown is just not publicly hosted on the code-sharing web site du jour. It doesn’t have lots of of individuals contributing to it, and the final time the unique Perl script was up to date was 2004. This too rubs programmers the flawed method. We’re a cliquish bunch; issues exterior the clique are seen with suspicion.
A few decade in the past, there was an effort to remove the ambiguities in Markdown and produce it into line with coding dogma. Some programmers bought collectively and created CommonMark, which makes the alternatives the unique Markdown script doesn’t and got here up with what its creators suppose is the One Proper Approach to Do It.
CommonMark provided consolation. It’s on Github. It has a dialogue discussion board. It appears to be an lively venture. I’ve by no means personally included CommonMark right into a venture, however its parsers are what convert your Markdown to HTML on such fashionable websites as Stack Overflow, Github, and Reddit. (To remove the asterisk ambiguity, for instance, it proposed underscore for italics, asterisk for daring.) Presumably the builders behind CommonMark contemplate it a hit.
But it surely’s not Markdown. Not in identify, and I’d argue not in spirit.
Across the time the CommonMark effort was taking place, the software program developer Dave Winer advised me one thing I nonetheless take into consideration: Markdown belongs to everybody who makes use of it. That is actually true due to the license. But it surely additionally jogged my memory of the true level of free software program. All of us have a say in it: by utilizing it, by adapting it, even by forking it.
Whether or not Gruber supposed it this manner or not, Markdown does belong to everybody, and there’s no commonplace. I exploit a really outdated model of Markdown for Python. Gruber presumably nonetheless makes use of his Perl script. Different folks use different variations. It’s messy. It’s ambiguous. It’s human.
And this, in the long run, is the Manner.
