Discussion regarding Markdown, a lightweight markup syntax, and related software. ()

headers Brett | 4 Nov 2010 22:34

I see in the archives that using a common extension for markdown has been discussed. Has an official
consensus ever been reached?

Thanks

--
Brett

I don't think you can find any "official body" that would be able to
say anything :)

Short answer: not that I know of.

I use either '.markdown' or '.txt'

- jem

On 2010 Nov 04, at 19:22, Jan Erik Moström wrote:

> I don't think you can find any "official body" that would be able to say anything :)

Well, here's a way to get consensus. Make this list the official body, get suggestions, take a vote, and then
get John Gruber to approve. Voila, a consensus file extension (or small set of file extensions [3-4]).

--
Brett

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I don't think you can get Gruber to "bless" an extension.

On 5 Nov 2010, at 10:18, Jan Erik Moström wrote:

> I don't think you can get Gruber to "bless" an extension.

Indeed — this has come up before. Gruber used ‘.text’ at that time.  
One suggestion I liked was ‘.mtext’ since it stresses the readability  
of the file.

I use ‘.mdown’ myself — I’d prefer ‘.md’ if it wasn’t for the  
ambiguity/clashes.

On 2010 Nov 05, at 05:18, Jan Erik Moström wrote:

> I don't think you can get Gruber to "bless" an extension.

Gruber is the markdown pope so he should walk around blessing stuff. 

I haven't experimented with others, but TextMate seems to recognize .markdown so that's what I use.

On Nov 4, 2010, at 11:28 PM, Dr. Drang wrote:

> The iOS text editor Elements recognizes these:  md, mdwn, mdown,
> and markdown.

/david

--
david herren-lage - shoreham, vt & pamplona, es

Among millions of cows, we can find the only one with mad-cow disease, but we can't seem to find Osama bin
Laden. 

Maybe we should take the CIA and the military off the case and put the Department of Agriculture in charge?

On Nov 5, 2010, at 5:43 AM, David Herren wrote:

> I haven't experimented with others, but TextMate seems to recognize .markdown so that's what I use.

I tend to use “mdown” just because that seemed to be what the QuickLook generator supported, and it's
among the many that TextMate recognizes so it wasn't a deal breaker. None of which brings us any closer to an
answer, of course.

How about this:

  1. Get every system in the world to use filesystem metadata to determine type instead of some part of the
file's name.
  2. Get every existing transfer mechanism updated to preserve such metadata.
  3. No step 3. We're done. That was easy! ;)

--

-- 
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>

Here are the results from the limited data set provided. It looks like 'markdown' is the winner followed by
'mdown'. Third place is a tie between 'text' and 'md'.

If usage sets a standard, then 'markdown' is the standard.

Used by Multiple Sources
------------------------

* markdown - BBEdit, Elements, GitHub, Gruber <http://tinyurl.com/25bzct8>, TextMate
* mdown - Elements, GitHub, TextMate
* text - BBEdit, Gruber <http://tinyurl.com/2abbfjh>
* md - Elements, GitHub 

Used by One Source
------------------

* mark - BBEdit
* mdwn - Elements
* mkd - GitHub
* mkdn - GitHub

Suggested
---------

* mdtext
* mdtxt
* mtext

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I use Markdown in a homegrown wiki, thus use "wiki". I have come across 
other Markdown wikis that don't use an extension at all. Since generally 
where needed the extension can be custom defined, why do we need a 
"standard" anyway?

On 06/11/10 06:59 PM, Brett wrote:
> Here are the results from the limited data set provided. It looks like 'markdown' is the winner followed by
'mdown'. Third place is a tie between 'text' and 'md'.
>
> If usage sets a standard, then 'markdown' is the standard.
>
>
> Used by Multiple Sources
> ------------------------
>
> * markdown - BBEdit, Elements, GitHub, Gruber<http://tinyurl.com/25bzct8>, TextMate
> * mdown - Elements, GitHub, TextMate
> * text - BBEdit, Gruber<http://tinyurl.com/2abbfjh>
> * md - Elements, GitHub
>
>
> Used by One Source
> ------------------
>
> * mark - BBEdit
> * mdwn - Elements
> * mkd - GitHub
> * mkdn - GitHub
>
>
> Suggested
> ---------
>
> * mdtext
> * mdtxt
> * mtext
>
> _______________________________________________
> Markdown-Discuss mailing list
> Markdown-Discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
>

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Seumas Mac Uilleachan <seumas <at> idirect.ca> wrote:
> Since generally
> where needed the extension can be custom defined, why do we need a
> "standard" anyway?

For this reason I have been silent on this issue. [^1]

> On 06/11/10 06:59 PM, Brett wrote:
>>
>> Here are the results from the limited data set provided. It looks like
>> 'markdown' is the winner followed by 'mdown'. Third place is a tie between
>> 'text' and 'md'.
>>
>> If usage sets a standard, then 'markdown' is the standard.

However, I will say that standard or not, I doubt I will ever use
"markdown" as a file extension.  Call me lazy if you like, but I
simply don't want to type that much every time.  I prefer "txt" and if
I must use something else (for example on github) I'll use "md".

Truth be told, in many situations I see no reason for any special
designation. Docs for my projects on github are written in makdown and
all have "txt" for file extensions. Yes, they then display as plan
text. I don't care. If github some day adds a feature where they
figure out I'm using markdown and convert my docs to html, that's fine
too.

On the other hand, while something like [Github Pages] does need to
know what markup language a document is written in, it shouldn't need
to rely on a file extension for that info.  As Github Pages is just an
instance of [Jekyll] (of which there are many clones) and Jekyll
source files all require [metadata], and the metadata is always in the
same format regardless of the markup language used, then the metadata
could easily include the markup language used regardless of the file
extension. Hey, then I could use ".txt" for everything. I think I'll
go file a bug report with Jekyll.

[Github Pages]: http://pages.github.com/
[Jekyll]: http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/
[metadata]: https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/YAML-Front-Matter

[^1]: I can't help but notice that the other implementors have been
silent as well. I suspect that in part it is because we have all had
this discussion before. For some, because we really don't care.And in
part, because it really doesn't matter. It's the later for me mostly.

--

-- 
----
\X/ /-\ `/ |_ /-\ |\|
Waylan Limberg

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On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 15:01,  <Bowerbird <at> aol.com> wrote:
>>   why do we need a "standard" anyway?
>
> for the same reason any file "needs" a descriptive extension --
> so the humans will know something about that file's contents...

I think this is cuts to the reason why Gruber doesn't care to "bless"
an extension.
The way I see it, Markdown isn't meant to take over the format of a
file, it's a way to subtly add information to the plaintext.
Really, the presence of Markdown is metadata, not a file format.

The real reason people want a standard extension is so their
_programs_ know that it can be interpreted, colored, etc. according to
Markdown's syntax.
It's relevant to name XML data as ".xhtml" or ".plist" because it
informs both users and programs as to the content to expect and how to
handle it.
No one opening a text file will be confused if they find Markdown
syntax, it's pure bonus.

In this sense, it makes sense to use ".text", ".txt", or whatever
other plaintext extension is relevant.

A far better solution to identifying files containing Markdown would
be to define an Extended Attribute such as:
net.daringfireball.markdown
Markdown extensions like PHPMarkdownExtra could add data to that
attribute, or define their own, as in: com.michelf.phpmarkdownextra or
com.michelf.markdown.extra

This seems like a more appropriate way to identify that "file.txt",
which is plaintext above all else, also contains Markdown
"formatting".

An editor which knows nothing about Markdown won't care about the
metadata and won't be confused by the variety of "non-standard"
extensions, but will display and edit the plaintext just fine.

--

-- 
arno  s  hautala    /-|   arno <at> alum.wpi.edu

pgp f81c4e00
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