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

Junyi Yan | 19 May 2012 05:02

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

My stackoverflow question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9222990/is-there-an-official-organization-for-discussing-or-releasing-standard-markdown. And github issue here: https://github.com/michelf/php-markdown/issues/27.

So, if there were somebody hold that, the markdown world would be much better than ever!

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.).

OK, what's your idea?

mytharcher

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Richard Caldwell | 20 May 2012 00:44

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

Similar ideas for a standard for extensions have been kicked around in the past. It always collapses in arguments about what such a standard should look like.

There are two main problems with such an effort. First, there is no broad consensus among users on what the objective of such a standard should be. At one end of the spectrum you have relative Markdown purists for whom simple, readable plain text formatting is paramount and the base standard only needs a few key extensions. At the other end of the spectrum you have those who want Markdown to be a complete rich text markup language and are willing to accept more complex, less readable markup to achieve that goal.

Efforts usually break down during bickering among those factions so we never get to the second problem: implementers. Those who implement Markdown extensions generally do so to meet their own needs or preferences. It's not at all certain that they would update their work to meet a standard that may not do what they want - particularly when we can't achieve a broad consensus on such a standard in the first place.

In my view, the only hope for such an effort would be to get authors of most the popular extensions to sign on and come up with a process for forming such a standard among themselves before all the public bickering starts.

Good luck.

From: "Junyi Yan" <mytharcher <at> gmail.com>
To: markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 11:02:41 PM
Subject: Is there anyone would like to hold a standard organization of Markdown syntax?

My stackoverflow question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9222990/is-there-an-official-organization-for-discussing-or-releasing-standard-markdown. And github issue here: https://github.com/michelf/php-markdown/issues/27.

So, if there were somebody hold that, the markdown world would be much better than ever!

OK, what's your idea?

mytharcher

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Markdown-Discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss

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Paul Wilson | 20 May 2012 03:00

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

> 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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Sherwood Botsford | 20 May 2012 14:29

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

IF concensus could be reached, then many implementors would have to decide how to support it. There is very little history of open source projects merging, particularly when there are multiple forks of it

Mind you Posix is such a standard and it came up well after there were a zilling dialects of Unix. (And many GNU utilities have a flag, --posix-me-harder for compliance in the face of common usage.)

And there lies the hint:

Either command line flags, a dot rc file, or preferences for GUI implementations that handles the feature difference. This allow people who cling to 'the way that works' and is generally a good thing for any program that is use as a toolchain component.

Each author could also be responsible for a conversion program to migrate texts from their way to 'standards compliant'

The question then becomes for the authors: What's in it for them. Where before they were the sole prince of a small principality, now they become a cabinet member of a major state. No major feature change without concensus.

Does Flether even exchange email with the author of Pandoc?

I'm not hopeful of a merging of any of the strands happening. It's come up before on this list, but has received no support from any of the authors that I recall.

Respectfully,

Sherwood of Sherwood's Forests

Sherwood Botsford
Sherwood's Forests -- http://Sherwoods-Forests.com
780-848-2548
50042 Range Rd 31
Warburg, Alberta T0C 2T0

On 19 May 2012 19:00, Paul Wilson <pw6163 <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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