Thoughts on Markdown
Markdown is a clever and popular set of conventions for lightweight text markup, yet it has some really annoying warts. By following Markdown's own goals and principles, we can fix some problems and make additional improvements.
Markdown principles
From the main description:
The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.
Brilliant scoping.
I've looked at many Markdown extensions, and most violate the principles implied by the design goal(s) description. Most extensions look like line-noise gibberish (much worse than HTML markup), thus their use-cases would be better solved with HTML - no need for such extensions to exist. Just use HTML.
Another excerpt:
...the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.
Problems summary
The problems I have with Markdown all stem from violating the stated goals / implied principles of Markdown itself, in particular "formatting instructions" that look like line-noise (link syntax, image embedding, ## headers, backticks).
1. Asterisk demarcation for italic (never what I've seen it mean in plain text email).
2. No-one uses double asterisks or underlines in plain text email to mean something specific. It just looks like a typo.
3. Hyperlink syntax unnatural, deceptively difficult to recall, worse than MediaWiki [ ] style.
4. Image embedding uses a "!" prefix in a readability-hurting manner when a simpler syntax was possible. Again, never seen in plain text email.
5. Reference styles don't allow for (and prefer, which they should) end-note/foot-note style links.
6. ## header styles are unnatural and no better than MediaWiki == style.
7. backticks are not commonly used for code markup (ever? never seen in plain text email either).
8. Indented text should mean blockquote or just pre-wrap (friendlier), not code block (based on normal readability expectations and normal non-coding usage being preferred over coder-specific usage).
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language for comparisons of alternatives.
Modest solutions summary
Solutions for Markdown's problems can be derived by going back to Markdown's original design principle, and (re)starting from that.
A summary of modest proposals for fixing these problems based on what people type and/or what looks *good* in plain text:
1. Asterisk demarcation should mean bold (IM clients and G+ already do this)
2. No idea what to do with double (or more) asterisks or underlines. So ignore them.
3. Hyperlinking can/should be done automatically by just having links that use URLs in general (see 4 for exceptions)
4. Image embedding can/should be done automatically by just having links that use URLs that end in .jpg, .jpeg, gif, .png (similarly with video embedding for .mov .mp4 .ogv, audio embedding for .mp3 .wav).
5. Add ^1 to reference styling to create inline [1] style links that link to end notes rather than linking entirety of a phrase.
6. Drop ## header styles
7. Drop backticks as meaning anything
8. Treat double-space or more indented text as pre (was blockquote).
8a. Prefix/suffix a block of code with line(s) of comments in whatever programming language is being used. /*...*/ #... //... <!-- ... --> etc. A blank line after a similar line of commenting ends the block.
Blocks of code reasoning
Need a better solution to embedding blocks of code. Research needed. Providing a hint to the language of the code being used would be useful for syntax highlighting. Blocks of code should be copy/pasteable directly into code editing environments for immediate re-use (any solution requiring prefixing each line with some punctuation like a "#" would fail this). Perhaps prefix/suffix a block of code with line(s) of comments in whatever programming language is being used. /*...*/ #... //... <!-- ... --> etc.
Before and After
Here is a table of examples of existing problematic Markdown syntax along with suggested improvements for comparison:
Naming
Naming is hard. Nonetheless people have asked me for a name for this fixed, corrected, or replacement for markdown, so here are some thoughts (that I've searched and not found any critical collisions for)
- tmark
- -vita- a mnemonic for the order of video image alt/alink and text alink
- ...
Auto linking
In general auto-link any URLs. See below for exceptions for auto link embedding instead.
Auto link embed URLs
(implemented in http://tantek.com/github/cassis auto_link)
If the URL ends in .jpg, .jpeg, gif, .png, .svg then make it an img,
Ending with .mp4 .mov .ogv .webm , use a video tag,
Ending with .mp3 .wav, use an audio tag,
Else just hyperlink the URL to itself.
Good ideas
Here are few additions, that I'm convinced are good ideas based on real-world evidence for their need, and real-world publishing experience
Hyperlinks with link text
We could allow a hyperlinked text block as such:
linktext
URL
or optionally with URL parenthesized with < > (a common plain text email convention) or ( ) (English parenthetical applying to previous word/phrase)
linktext
<URL>
linktext
(URL)
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<a href=URL>linktext</a>
For inline: linktext URL
or: linktext <URL>
or: linktext (URL)
Hyperlinked images
(now supported in http://tantek.com/cassis.js auto_link)
Expanding upon the previous, if the "linktext" were a URL ending in .jpg .gif .png (URL2), then make a hyperlinked image, e.g.:
URL2.png
URL
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<a href=URL><img src="URL2.png" alt=""/></a>
Similarly, inline: URL2.png URL
Video with hyperlink
Expanding upon the previous, if the URL2 ended in .mp4 .mov .ogv, then make a video with fallback hyperlink, e.g.:
URL2.mp4
URL
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<video src="URL2.mp4"><a href=URL>a video</a></video>
Similarly, inline: URL2.png URL
Video with poster
Expanding upon the previous, if URL ended in .jpg .gif .png, then make a video with poster image, e.g.:
URL2.mp4
URL.jpg
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<video src="URL2.mp4" poster="URL.jpg">a video</video>
Similarly, inline: URL2.mp4 URL.jpg
Question: should it also automatically make a fallback image?
<video src="URL2.mp4" poster="URL.jpg"><img src="URL.jpg" alt="a video"/></video>
Video with poster and hyperlink
Expanding upon the previous, if there was a third URL3 in-between URL2 and URL, that ended in .jpg .gif .png, then make a video with poster image URL3 and fallback hyperlink, e.g.:
URL2.mp4
URL3.jpg
URL
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<video src="URL2.mp4" poster="URL3.jpg"><a href=URL>a video</a></video>
Similarly, inline: URL2.mp4 URL3.jpg URL
Question: should it make a fallback hyperlinked image?
<video src="URL2.mp4" poster="URL3.jpg"><a href=URL><img src="URL3.jpg" alt="a video"/></a></video>
Other ideas
Here are few possible additions, that I'd only really want to consider after there was sufficient real-world evidence for their need, and perhaps some informal plain text publishing experience first.
Alt text for images
Another variant of the above, if the URL ends in .jpg .gif .png, text following was not a URL, then use the text following as an image alternate:
URL.png
(alt-text)
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<img src="URL.png" alt="alt-text"/>
Similarly inline: URL.png (alt-text)
Hyperlinked images with alt text
Finally, combine the previous two to allow hyperlinked images with alt text
URL2.png
URL
(alt-text)
OR perhaps this would this be better (since alt text is necessarily more strongly tied to image contents, whereas an image could be reasonably hyperlinked to various different URLs)
URL2.png
(alt-text)
URL
where each is on a line by itself, turning that into:
<a href="/URL"><img src="URL2.png" alt="alt-text"/></a>
Similarly inline: URL2.png URL (alt-text)
or: URL2.png (alt-text) URL
More header styles
Add more header styles like perhaps a line of periods or spaced periods, e.g.:
Header 3
.............
Header 4
. . . . . . .
Partial Implementation
Other possible needs
Inline code snippets
Though I do use inline code markup in HTML and wiki syntax quite often, I'm not convinced this is a general need that deserves a special syntax. Might possibly need a (better than Markdown) solution to embedding inline code snippets.
Past improvement ideas
Some ideas for improving Markdown that seemed like decent incremental improvements, but later I decided they weren't that much better, or far more drastic solutions/changes were needed.
Expand Link Styling Syntax
Update: the Markdown link syntax is not like anything anyone ever types in email. Ditch it.
Previous thoughts on improving it:
Current Markdown link styling:
[example](http://example.com/ "Title")
Suggested additions:
[example](http://example.com/ "Title" .class1 .class2 #id rel=rel-value boolean_attribute attribute1=one-word-value attribute2="quoted multi-word value")
Re-using .class #id from CSS and jQuery.
Re-using rel=rel-value boolean_attribute attribute1=one-word-value attribute2="quoted multi-word value" from simple HTML attribute syntax.
In all cases, all the "extra" information is contained in the parentheses, and thus reasonably easy to always skip when just reading over the content.
If there is no URL, then just use span for the markup rather than an a href.
If there is no URL but there is a src attribute, then just use an img (or video or audio if the src has an extension that better maps to those.)
Allow multiple URLs, the first for an href, and a second URL for the src of a linked img (or video or audio if the second URL has an extension that better maps to those). Similarly if there is a URL and an explicit src= attribute (for the second URL). Could even allow multiple src= attributes, turning them into source elements to provide multiple video or audio embedded sources. A final image src could provide a fallback image.
Adoption
Markdown appears to be growing in popularity among the IndieWeb crowd, as both an authoring format, and a storage format. However, every time I've looked at it, the above-mentioned problems irked me sufficiently to not want to adopt it, and I've stubbornly stuck with using HTML (currently HTML5+hAtom) as my de facto structured storage format (e.g. for tantek.com posts). I'm considering forking Markdown and making the improvements noted above.
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