[DG: Open Forum] Favorite Markup Language

[Zach A. Thomas]

Markdown, A Love Story
======================

I love Markdown, though I've never looked at Restructured Text. The beauty of Markdown is that it is just as human readable as it is machine readable, since it follows the conventions that people _already_ use for formatting plain text.

    10 PRINT "You just indent to indicate you want to format as code."

Here are a few other things to love about Markdown:

1. My [editor of choice][1] syntax-colors my Markdown, and converts the document to HTML with a single keyboard shortcut.
2. github.com will automatically format as HTML any README file written in Markdown.
3. "Proper" quotation marks -- and dashes for that matter -- are done automatically.
4. It's perfect for documents that don't have steep formatting requirements.
5. You just write, and the syntax gets out of your way.

I'm sure you realize by now that this message is in Markdown. Give it a [try!][2]

Zach

-------------------------------------------------

[1]: http://macromates.com/ "TextMate"
[2]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax "Markdown Syntax"


On Apr 26, 2010, at 12:42 PM, Steven Githens wrote:

> Sometimes I don't mind writing HTML for simple docs ( I used to use 
> docbook, and that was way more painful ).  But I suppose HTML can mean a 
> lot of things.  If you were going to roll a set of documentation with 
> just HTML what stack of tools would you use?  I think the usage of even 
> more than a couple HTML editors would mangle the documents with their 
> own conventions. 
> 
> Usually, if you use Markdown or Restructured Text, in addition to the 
> syntax it brings along the toolchain ( for example using Sphinx with 
> Restructured Text ).  So I guess, it's a core markup plus a set of nice 
> tools to make tables of contents and stuff too, although for this use 
> case I was imagining a text editor being the authoring tool across the 
> examples.
> 
> -s
> 
> 
> Nate Angell wrote:
>> I like this markup syntax called "HTML"...it's pretty widely used and
>> there are some tools out there to help you use it.
>> 
>> --
>> Nate Angell
>> Client Evangelist
>> 
>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Steven Githens <swgithen at mtu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> Just curious what you're favorite markup/wiki/formatting syntax is.
>>> Markdown? Creole? Restructured Text? LaTeX?  Something else?  The
>>> context here is mostly for writing instructions and technical
>>> documentation for open source software.
>>> 
>>> I've been using Restructured Text for my personal projects, and am
>>> thinking about switching to Markdown or something similar.
>>> 
>>> DISCUSS!
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Steve