On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:34, bucephalus org <[email protected]> wrote: > > Of course, the double rule > for say *this* and _this_ is simple and is not that hard to understand. But > I had neither a history or habit with either *this* or _that_. So, I spend > some time on the question, what the best choice would be and which one I > should make my own default. You may say, "whatever you prefer". But this is > what I exactly don't expect from a standard: to be left with this choices.
This is the key. Markdown *isn't* a standard. As defined by Gruber it is "two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML." The second applies specifically to Gruber's implementation. The first covers the Markdown community as a whole. Overall, the Markdown syntax is a standard only in the sense that it has a large number of implementations that share the same core syntax, while expanding as desired. > When people read my markdown and when I read other peoples texts, I rather > want us to use the same conventions. In that case, you should communicate with those people and agree to use the same restricted set. Markdown offering multiple forms of emphasis markup isn't any different than SHOUTING vice using an exclamation mark! > And more important for me was the other "freedom" I mentioned: that there is > no standard file extension. If you want a standard file extension, use what Gruber does: ".text". In my view, there isn't any such thing as a "Markdown document". If there was, the Markdown syntax would have failed to achieve its goals. There are *text* documents which are formatted according to Markdown conventions, but they're still *text*. This isn't quite the same as HTML, which are text documents that are only meant to be interpreted as HTML. Markdown is always text, meant to be read as text, with formatting to convey additional, but non-critical, information. -- arno s hautala /-| [email protected] pgp b2c9d448 _______________________________________________ Markdown-Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
