* Fletcher T. Penney <fletc...@fletcherpenney.net> [2010-03-06 00:00]: > The point is that each of these variant forms of Markdown > evolved to scratch someone's particular itch.
As indeed did Markdown himself. Once it scratched John’s own itch well enough, he lost the compulsion to improve it. Which I can relate to very well – a lot of my personal projects end up this way. The problem we are having is that by virtue of being the principal designer of Markdown, he is also the only one with the authority to set a direction and have all implementations unilaterally follow it. Michel Fortin is probably the only one in an at all comparable position. Personally I find most extensions to Markdown lacking in that ineffable spirit that ties Markdown together. But I’m pretty sure that the designers of these extensions disagree, and would in turn find my proposals lacking. And if that is the case, then I’d be even less likely to want anything that any likely committee would cook up. This is why the fact that Gruber himself no longer participates causes a problem for everyone else who is invested in Markdown: there is no longer a central voice. But Gruber created what he did, and shared it, and he marketed it (and very successfully, as we all are proof of) for what it was. That no one else has had the same success in pushing their own evolution of the format does not oblige Gruber to anything. If Markdown is to evolve, this is the problem that needs to be solved: it needs a principal designer with a good enough sense for its spirit and enough of a voice to gain the authority to have his or her mandates followed. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/> _______________________________________________ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss