[HN Gopher] The Story Behind Markdown
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The Story Behind Markdown
Author : awwstn
Score : 81 points
Date : 2020-10-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (capiche.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (capiche.com)
| tpmx wrote:
| I had no idea Aaron Swartz was the originator of the principal
| design decisions behind Markdown:
|
| http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/intro
|
| I had always thought that Gruber was the guy who created it. This
| makes so much more sense. I couldn't make sense of it - it always
| felt like someone else with a different kind of capability had
| created it.
|
| If you google "markdown" it says "Developed by: John Gruber (in
| collaboration with Aaron Swartz on the syntax)"
|
| This now seems like a gross misrepresentation.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Please be nice.
| tpmx wrote:
| Please be factual.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| All right, let me offer a different phrasing: Aaron Swartz
| created atx, and John Gruber created Markdown. The syntax
| between the two is similar, but not identical, as can be
| said for several other "plain text markup" formats that
| are, you know, not Markdown. (Like Textile, which was also
| not created by Aaron Swartz.) Not insignificantly, the
| original Perl script that implements Markdown was John
| Gruber's. It functions as a plugin for the Perl-based
| Movable Type blog engine because that's what Daring
| Fireball uses. Swartz wrote atx, by contrast, in his
| preferred programming language of Python.
|
| So, to be factual: John Gruber created Markdown.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'd say: John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown.
| [deleted]
| saagarjha wrote:
| The facts are that personal attacks are not tolerated here.
| My comment was simply a reminder that you should already
| know this.
| tpmx wrote:
| You're right. I edited the comment to make it less
| inoffensive to Apple fans. We should really protect these
| people. Apple fans truly are one of the most oppressed
| peoples nowadays.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| Am I the only person that gets annoyed that every single site
| wants to implement their own special and incompatible subset of
| markdown? Yes, I'm looking at you HackerNews, who makes it hard
| to block quote.
| slx26 wrote:
| CommonMark is not trivial to implement efficiently... and not
| all sites need as much functionality as CommonMark provides.
| So, would you prefer sites to invent something completely weird
| and new each time, or use something more familiar that looks
| like a subset of markdown? Sure, it can be done better or
| worse, but I don't think the concept is wrong. But honestly,
| many comment systems only have italics, quotes, lists, urls and
| maybe code, bold text and images... most of which have been
| indicated in plain txt files for a long time in quite
| consistent ways, hardly Markdown's trademark markup.
| spiffytech wrote:
| HN doesn't even attempt to support Markdown. It's just
| happenstance that a couple of formatting options are similar.
|
| HN's doc on formatting: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
|
| But on other sites, yes, it's very irritating that I can't
| count on support for things like tables or checkboxes because
| those are extensions to Markdown and not part of CommonMark or
| the original reference everyone implemented from. Or how some
| sites get finnicky about whitespace around list items.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > HN doesn't even attempt to support Markdown. It's just
| happenstance that a couple of formatting options are similar.
|
| In particular, for a website that heavily covers software and
| engineering, it's a pain that it doesn't have a good way to
| format code.
|
| ``` this should be formatted as four lines of code with line
| breaks at every newline without having to indent every line
| with spaces ```
| jbotz wrote:
| Doesn't it though..? This could be
| some code
|
| It just isn't markdown-ish.
| the_af wrote:
| I wonder why this is. Is it because there aren't enough HN
| users who would actually use markdown formatting (I know I
| would!), because it's too much work to implement, because
| "if it ain't broke...", or for any other reason?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The one and only reason I feel like that's not _such_ a bad
| thing is that once you do that, you know more people will
| drop tons of code samples in posts making the discussion a
| lot less easy to browse.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's the same idea even if they don't call it markdown. It's
| yet another formatting language to learn and occasionally
| confuse with similar things on other sites, and will
| occasionally bite you when you least expect it.
|
| For example:
|
| I never shop at Wal _Mart because Wal_ Mart doesn't pay their
| workers a living wage.
| thecrumb wrote:
| Markdown _was_ such a great idea.
|
| Now it's fractured so much it's just a pain. Is this vanilla
| markdown or am I in Github markdown? Or my wiki markdown?
| jchook wrote:
| The article seems to gloss over the enormous contribution
| CommonMark made to ensuring a consistent and versatile
| interpretation of markdown, mostly by examining edge cases no one
| thinks about until they appear in the wild.
| xenocyon wrote:
| I was introduced to markdown via RStudio. But what I really use
| the most nowadays is markdown for making notes during meetings
| etc, using a minimalist editor (Typora). I just wish it weren't
| so complicated/ugly to copy/paste markdown to/from other tools,
| like Outlook or Confluence.
|
| I use only the basic and common syntactic elements (lists,
| headings, italics, links). IMHO the beauty of markdown is its
| simplicity, and trying to do complicated stuff like diagrams and
| tables is best left to other tools. (Another problem with the
| more ambitious uses is that they tend to not be standardized
| across markdown implementations.)
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| The capture of cmd+f on that page is truly terrible. Why do
| people do this?
| Mamady wrote:
| The goal is to make it easier for users to perform a site-wide
| "find". You can easily disable it by using the checkbox on the
| bottom right of the overlay that appears; then cmd+f will
| behave similar to your browser's setup.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem is that our fancy new infinite scrolling pages
| break ctrl-f in browsers, as they cycle content in and out
| based on the viewport or collapse threads by actually
| removing the content from the page.
|
| The downside is that the site's built-in search feature is
| always worse than ctrl-f at finding something on the page.
| Always. It shouldn't even be hard, but they're always
| returning garbage like 8 year old posts on completely
| unrelated articles instead of the stuff on the page you're
| currently viewing, and advanced mode is usually broken in
| weird and confusing ways. It seems like web designers are
| optimizing for the thing you never do.
| macintux wrote:
| You have to look at it closely enough to discover that, which
| is difficult when you're actively angry at the site.
|
| I just switched to reader mode and used Command-F there
| instead.
| POiNTx wrote:
| Few people want to do a site wide search and the ones who do
| will press the input box on the top left. No one expects that
| ctrl-f will open a site wide search, everyone expects a page
| search.
|
| If you still want to enable this ctrl-f to enable the site
| wide search, I suggest making it opt in with the checkbox.
| It's really obnoxious to have to disable the checkbox.
| awwstn wrote:
| Agree that for new traffic like HN, and maybe on our essays
| generally, it's a bit jarring. We'll tweak these settings a
| bit.
|
| This search interface has been a huge hit with our regular
| users, but it's harder to get feedback from fly-by traffic,
| so this is really helpful.
| the_af wrote:
| If regular users find it helpful, maybe advertise this as
| an opt-in feature?
|
| To be honest, the non-standard behaviour plus strange
| looking popup confused me. I didn't even notice the tiny
| checkbox, nor that you could press CTRL+F again to get
| the standard search behaviour. My mistake, of course, but
| this speaks of poor UX in my opinion...
| awwstn wrote:
| FWIW, we got the idea from Stripe's API docs[1]. Not that
| Stripe is above reproach, but they sure are good at this
| stuff.
|
| [1] https://stripe.com/docs/api
| ochoseis wrote:
| A common hotkey for a site's search box is "/", vim-style.
| degenerate wrote:
| Please don't override default keyboard shortcuts. The
| sitewide search is a nice tool, but if I wanted to do that I
| would search on your site. Novice and advanced users want
| CTRL+F to behave as they are expecting, not bring up an
| unfamiliar (and unrelated) tool. For example Google Sheets
| also hijacks CTRL+F but at least it replaces it with
| something that operates extremely similar to the original
| action.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Why should a browser allow its own shortcuts to be
| overridden at all? At the very least, some form of warning
| or permission-granting should be involved.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They're permitted to be overridden so that we can make
| web _applications_. It makes sense for sites like Google
| Docs or Sheets to override many of the defaults as, once
| loaded, it 's replacing a desktop application and the
| common access patterns of it. It's less applicable (and
| very annoying) on sites meant for presentation or
| consumption of information.
| wtetzner wrote:
| But users should be able to override and specify that
| certain shortcuts can't be hijacked.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That I would agree with 100%. It'd be nice to have a
| panel of all the shortcuts and their present meaning
| available, with the option to rebind them or remove site-
| local bindings.
|
| The user could get the option to prevent (by default)
| changes to bindings, with the option to permit them on a
| site-by-site (or even page-by-page) basis; or to allow
| them by default and then deny them on a site-by-site
| basis.
| boogies wrote:
| I have this as one part of Pentadactyl. I think
| SurfingKeys et. al. also allow this to some extent.
| fastball wrote:
| Press it again and you get normal page search?
| the_af wrote:
| It never would have occurred to me if I hadn't read your
| comment. So... poor UX?
| fastball wrote:
| It's more a UI problem, not having a tip telling the user
| you can do that.
|
| Stripe's API reference[1] was one of the first to do this,
| and I really enjoy it. In their popup modal thing they tell
| you to press CMD/CTRL+F again if you want to browser native
| find functionality.
|
| [1] https://stripe.com/docs/api
| the_af wrote:
| It's uncommon enough that none of the ton of websites I
| visit (a healthy mix of tech, gaming, hobby, news and
| other sites) employ this trick. Call it what you will, UX
| or UI: it's still poor, as in "nonstandard" and
| "confusing".
| fastball wrote:
| Right, my point is just that non-standard UX does not
| _need_ to be confusing if you properly explain what is
| happening to your users.
|
| Every standard interaction started out non-standard,
| after all.
| spurgu wrote:
| Agreed. As long as you point it out it's fair to me (even
| if I don't personally happen to like it).
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| I closed the tab when ctrl-f produced a popover. I thought it
| was an ad, and I couldn't search the page.
| jawngee wrote:
| It's Charles Schulz, not Charles Swartz.
| RickHull wrote:
| Yes, it looks like the author confused Charles' last name with
| that of Aaron Swartz who is also mentioned. RIP The Internet's
| Own Boy
| leephillips wrote:
| Advice to the author:
|
| This is a subject I am interested in, so I began your article
| eagerly, but had to stop about halfway through out of
| frustration. Please consider these as the constructive
| suggestions that I intend them to be:
|
| Think about the story you want to tell. Maybe make an outline or
| diagram, marking at which points you will introduce which facts.
|
| Example: For some reason something called Commonmark is abruptly
| mentioned, with a link to spec documents that would seem to be of
| only technical interest. What is this, and how is it connected to
| anything else?
|
| Do enough research so that you know the highest peaks in the
| landscape. Why describe the foothills and take no notice of the
| prominent mountaintop right in front of us?
|
| Example: the bits about the comics were fascinating. But where is
| Pandoc? I don't think I'm guilty, here, of demanding that you
| write the article I would have written. But Pandoc is _the_
| application of Markdown. It turns Markdown into a way to author
| HTML, TeX, PDF, Office formats, and a lot more. It's _huge_.
|
| Anyway, I like the look of your site (but agree with others that
| you should not hijack browser shortcuts).
| gen220 wrote:
| I feel like pandoc is kind of like a secret club.
|
| Once you know about pandoc, you orient all of your prose around
| it, because it's so powerful and useful.
|
| But before you use it, the common opinion is "oh that sounds
| nice", not "oh let me build all of my workflows around it".
|
| It is incredible how far markdown, sed and pandoc (with
| filters) can take you!
|
| I've made websites with breadcrumbs, validated inter-document
| links and images, on and on; mostly pipelines with sed and
| pandoc.
|
| All of my non-source-code homework in college went through
| pandoc, and was persisted as markdown source. It makes for
| clean diffs, and great version history.
|
| Anyway. Give pandoc a try if you haven't already.
| kstrauser wrote:
| One of prouder moments in life was convincing a legal team to
| convert a folder of Word docs to Markdown, check them into
| GitHub, and set up a CI/CD pipeline to convert them to PDFs
| to sharing.
| leephillips wrote:
| That sounds like quite an accomplishment. At this point I
| don't even think I would try.
| leephillips wrote:
| I'm with you.
|
| And it's true that's it's hard to take account of your own
| perspective. It's possible to write a kind of story of
| Markdown and not make Pandoc a big part of it. But it seems
| like a glaring omission to not even mention it. It's what
| makes Markdown a real lingua franca, what gives it real
| power.
| macintux wrote:
| No mention of org-mode, which is a shame, and of course the
| hijacking of F is maddening.
| cma wrote:
| Why do websites like this capture ctrl-f and make it not search
| the page?
| jgilias wrote:
| Just one of the great things Aaron Schwartz was involved in. So
| sad we lost him so young. I really do believe the Internet would
| somehow be a different place now if he was still around.
| bonaldi wrote:
| I've always found it strange that such a strong Mac advocate as
| Gruber was behind Markdown. After all, the Mac was doing real
| rich text in 1984, and with just one more push in the early
| browser days we might have got there for the web too.
|
| Instead we're left with this inconsistent mess -- hell, even
| Gruber gets his own link syntax wrong from time to time - because
| good enough was the enemy of better.
| leephillips wrote:
| What do you consider "better" here: having to use the mouse to
| click on menus to make something italic? Or do I misunderstand.
| bonaldi wrote:
| Rich text editing doesn't demand a mouse: it's the same
| number of keystrokes to press cmd-b as it is to do shift-8.
| But if the intended output is rich text, then wysiwyg is a
| better interface for editing, yes. Not everything needs to
| degrade to a teletype.
| leephillips wrote:
| But it's more than just hitting cmd-b, isn't it? Doesn't
| the text that you want to be bold need to be selected
| first?
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| Simplified markup of text was standard on wikis, beginning with
| Ward's Wiki at c2.com in 1994, a full ten years before Markdown
| appeared.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| This article mentions CommonMark, and skips lightly over the fact
| that it was hastily renamed that from Standard Markdown after
| Gruber threw an enormous hissy fit over users improving something
| he hadn't touched for twelve years:
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...
| leephillips wrote:
| That's pretty funny, considering Gruber's attitude toward other
| people's intellectual property: https://lee-
| phillips.org/music/whoIsTheDick/
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You might find readers more sympathetic to your post if you
| spent more time on the copyright issues and less on telling
| us repeatedly that other people's taste in music is wrong
| danbolt wrote:
| I haven't heard of the cover album before, but thanks for
| linking it. It doesn't sound the opening track is using
| actual hardware (such as a Ricoh 2A03 or a Konami VRC6), but
| the cover of _All Blues_ almost has a Tim Follin feeling to
| it.
| tobr wrote:
| I read that and thought to myself, "The only thing this Lee
| Phillips person is managing to convince me of is that Lee
| Phillips is a dick". Then I came back here and realized
| that's you.
|
| I guess I'm the dick now.
| leephillips wrote:
| You lost me.
| zorpner wrote:
| It's quite the essay, defending a man who purchased a
| house for a low price and made a piece of art decades
| ago, and continues to extract value from both without
| making any additional meaningful contributions as regards
| either. It's almost... like he's seeking... rent. I
| wonder if there's an economic term for this behavior or
| any theory about whether or not it should be rewarded.
| leephillips wrote:
| How is he extracting value from the house by living in
| it? As the market value goes up, it costs him more, as
| his property taxes will go up. As to the photograph,
| well, he owns the copyright. Period. You may not think we
| should have copyright, but that's another conversation.
| mietek wrote:
| Peppered with Amazon referral links, too.
| kstrauser wrote:
| BTW, it's Wendy Carlos, not Walter.
| leephillips wrote:
| I used the name as it was when he created the thing I was
| talking about. This is a problem that arises whenever a
| scholar or artist changes his or her name, say by getting
| married. If you use the new name, nobody will find the
| reference. So I'm not sure what's correct in all cases.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nitpick: when _she_ created the thing.
|
| That's not unreasonable, but she started transitioning
| over 50 years ago. I think it's appropriate to refer to
| her as Wendy now, as Wikipedia and all the online music
| stores I just peeked at do.
| slipheen wrote:
| I don't want to rehash that whole thing, but I totally agree
| with Gruber in that case.
|
| The "Standard Markdown" name really implied a degree of
| canonicity and authority over Markdown, even though it was
| neither created by or endorsed by Markdown's creator.
|
| CommonMark also only changed the name from "Standard Flavored
| Markdown" to "Standard Markdown" after sending a copy to
| Gruber, so I'm sure it at least felt very dishonest.
|
| The new name is clearer, and it's been a settled issue for the
| last 6 years. I'm not sure why the article would have gone into
| more detail about it.
| darkstarsys wrote:
| Doesn't mention org, rst, or any of the other simplified ASCII
| markup mini-languages. Missed opportunity.
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(page generated 2020-10-22 23:00 UTC)