This is almost a manifesto (*I may change my mind tomorrow*). But I hope it will ring some bells.
1 - SCEPTICISM I'm sceptical WikiText & other current simple markup and Markdown systems are anything special. Their utility lays in that they aren't: MEANING, they are foundations but not the final building. That does NOT mean that I think SHORTHAND is not relevant. It IS. Very. But is should be a DODDLE (very easy) of improvisation, not a labour of slavery to the past. *Making YOUR OWN Shorthand Markup SYSTEM should be simple in TW too. It isn't. It could be.* *IMO USER shorthand markup is the way ahead that addresses what MD and WikiText lack and which TiddlyWiki can provide EASILY.* When Gruber introduced Markdown (MD) it was a very elegant solution to formatting EMAIL. Gruber & Swartz reasoned that markup should allow plain texts to remain readable even when marked-up. Excellent aim. As long as your write nothing outside their syntax it works well still. And it covers about 20% of actual writing forms. Its excellent but VERY limited. NOW. A problem, not noted much about Wiki markup systems generally, is the FINITE number of special universal characters available that make visually semantic sense. This is very clear with markers like "*" "#" and "_". They had semantic resonance before the web as markers. If you look at the simpler markup systems you'll quickly see they hit a limit where they can't find any new characters that have the semantic clarity of those Founding Glyphs. Basically All Decent Characters have been eaten already. So "simple markup" (READABLE) became "more complex markup" (LESS READABLE) anyway. That *symbolic paucity of available characters on the keyboard has itself limited growth of simple markup IMO *to its detriment. It has not kept up with webby expression well. A long time has passed. The net is way ahead of the original intent of those systems now. And MD's LIMITED scope is now as much about EATING IT, DIGESTING it INTO other more EXPANSIVE formats. Its a BIT of something else. It is NOT a* Ding an sich* to do simpler markup in real usage. Its a mixture. A morph. a mash-up. A blend. A MORE THAN it. In other words MD is a limited formatting system with good utility still for limited objectives. Its boring. Clean(ish). And easily supported. And NEEDS extensions it itself does not support to be credit worthy. Maybe more later. Josiah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/3db5240b-cdfd-45b2-be4e-550005540598%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
