Markdown turned a core a part of how I wrote. The simplicity and suppleness meant I’d dwell the dream of write as soon as, run anyplace. 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 possibly can’t add these to the generated HTML. By the logic of the unique Markdown script, if you’d like full management over the HTML output, then you definately’d want to put in writing in HTML.
This case is nice for Markdown customers: that’s, writers. It’s much less nice for programmers. In actual fact, 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 decide whichever explicit model is greatest suited to my wants. As a programmer, I hate that once I construct one thing I’ve to make this identical choice, which then impacts all of the individuals who use my completed product. Perhaps I didn’t help some particular extension they had been anticipating as a result of they’ve all the time used the identical Markdown parser and assume that function is accessible.
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**). Thus far so good. However what ought to occur when you write **like* this**? Ought to that be rendered like* this? Or possibly like this*? There’s no approach 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 website du jour. It doesn’t have tons 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 improper method. We’re a cliquish bunch; issues exterior the clique are seen with suspicion.
A couple of decade in the past, there was an effort to remove the ambiguities in Markdown and convey 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 Technique to Do It.
CommonMark supplied 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 successful.
But it surely’s not Markdown. Not in title, and I’d argue not in spirit.
Across the time the CommonMark effort was occurring, the software program developer Dave Winer instructed 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 actual level of free software program. All of us have a say in it: through the use of it, by adapting it, even by forking it.
Whether or not Gruber meant it this manner or not, Markdown does belong to everybody, and there’s no normal. I take advantage of a really previous 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 Means.
