On 18 Oct 2017, at 06:12, Dave <[email protected]> wrote:
> It has a totally non-semantic syntax,

I’m not sure what that means.

> which makes nearly impossible for many, like me, to learn it; since the 
> characters it uses are often part of the content, certain content can't be 
> represented without complicated escapes, and some can't be represented at 
> all; its HTML repertoire is severely limited, for example, some 
> implementations allow tables, but not if you need cells to span multiple 
> columns or rows;

No, because it is not intended to be a replacement for HTML. It is intended to 
be “I have a text file which if I do a few things to it it still looks like a 
text file to anyone reading it, but can also be easily converted into simple 
HTML.” Complex tables are not part of that. In fact, I don’t think tables are 
supported in Markdown at all. Maybe you hate some markdown fork?

<https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>
"Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.

Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. 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.”

> implementations vary widely, which not only adds to the learning curve but 
> also limits what you can express where. When a presentation language

Yeah, it’s not a presentation language.

> places limits on what you can express, forcing you to dumb down your message, 
> and learning it, including its limitations and idiosyncratic implementations, 
> takes a huge investment in time for something that was intended to save time, 
> those are pretty good reasons for hating it.

A high investment of time? I have one document that has all the basic markdown 
in it (about 20 lines of text) which I open as a reference if I want to do 
something in markdown I’ve forgot to. Otherwise, 99% of it is just writing the 
text and formatting it basically the way I would anyway.

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