Re: Agreeing on "Historical Markdown" (was: Re: text/markdown effort in IETF (invite))
> On Jul 11, 2014, at 7:20 PM, John MacFarlane wrote: > > +++ Sean Leonard [Jul 11 14 01:54 ]: > >> Since we cannot reach consensus on what ought to be "Standard Markdown" >> today, can the community reach consensus on "Historical Markdown"--of which >> I propose three working definitions? > > I think the only sensible thing to refer to is John Gruber's Markdown > syntax description, which is the canonical reference (even if it is very > incomplete on the details). Markdown.pl 1.0.1 and 1.0.2b7 are both > buggy implementations. Neither one is faithful to the syntax > description. I agree. There is one markdown -- the syntax rules. While there may be many implementations, they are all buggy -- whether intentional or not. Actually, I might be persuaded that there there is two: the rules, and "extended markdown" -- which would be all intentional deviations from the rules. If your documents are "markdown" then they strictly follow the rules and mostly likely will be parsed by all markdown parsers the same way. However, if your document is "extended markdown", then all bets are off. Such a label is in effect saying; "Hey, this text document represents markdown text, but may not strictly be pure markdown text. Weird things may happen. Consider yourself warned." Beyond that, I see no need to specify anything further. Waylan Limberg ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Agreeing on "Historical Markdown" (was: Re: text/markdown effort in IETF (invite))
+++ Sean Leonard [Jul 11 14 01:54 ]: Since we cannot reach consensus on what ought to be "Standard Markdown" today, can the community reach consensus on "Historical Markdown"--of which I propose three working definitions? I think the only sensible thing to refer to is John Gruber's Markdown syntax description, which is the canonical reference (even if it is very incomplete on the details). Markdown.pl 1.0.1 and 1.0.2b7 are both buggy implementations. Neither one is faithful to the syntax description. To give just one example: the syntax description says, "Each subsequent paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one tab." But neither version of Markdown.pl actually imposes this requirement: http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=+-+item%0A%0A+more%0A%0A+-+new+item%0A ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Agreeing on "Historical Markdown" (was: Re: text/markdown effort in IETF (invite))
Le 11-juil.-2014 à 4:54, Sean Leonard a écrit : > Since we cannot reach consensus on what ought to be "Standard Markdown" > today, can the community reach consensus on "Historical Markdown"--of which I > propose three working definitions? > > * Classic Markdown: The Markdown syntax or Markdown.pl implementation, as > implemented by John Gruber, in 1.0.1, with all ambiguities, bugs, > frustrations, and contradictions. [In cases that the syntax and the tool > contradict, we come up with a way to resolve the contradictions.] > > * Original Markdown: The Markdown syntax or Markdown.pl implementation, as > implemented by John Gruber, in 1.0.2b7, with as many of the ambiguities, > bugs, frustrations, and contradictions fixed as he actually fixed (or failed > to fix) them. Aka "Markdown Web Dingus". > > * Idealized Markdown (aka Historical Standard Markdown): The Markdown that > everyone can agree is the way Markdown "should have been" back when there was > One True Markdown. Basically this is Original Markdown with its faults duly > recognized and corrected...many of these faults having been corrected in > practice in divergent implementations (Markdown Extra etc.) but never > officially recognized in Original Markdown. > > > I cannot say which of these three is better...but by recognizing these three > as common points, we can then start to compare on the same page. You might also call the first two "Markdown 1.0.1" and "Markdown 1.0.2b7" for simplicity's sake. As for the idealized version, that's what I call "Markdown" personally, or "plain Markdown" when I need to disambiguate. Wasn't 1.0.2b8 the last one though? Why is the Dingus running 1.0.2b7? Babelmark 2 has 1.0.2b8. -- Michel Fortin michel.for...@michelf.ca http://michelf.ca ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Agreeing on "Historical Markdown" (was: Re: text/markdown effort in IETF (invite))
So this thread has a lot of content, and is leading me to revise the proposal a few different ways. Thanks everyone thus far; it has been very educational. I would like to ask the community here with a basic question, so I can start to reason out from there. It seems that there is a general consensus that Markdown is an open-ended informal family of syntaxes based on John Gruber's original work. Everything in some way traces back to the original Markdown.pl script and syntax specification circa 2004. If it does not or cannot trace back, it's not Markdown--it's something else (e.g., reStructuredText). At the same time, the proliferation of variations, extensions, fixes, tweaks, and everything else has led to a staunch lack of consensus on what constitutes "Standard Markdown", i.e., the Markdown in 2014 that /everyone ought to follow/. This is in contrast to, say, XML or HTML--with XML there are very strict standards of what one ought to follow; with HTML it's much more open-ended but at least there is one organization (W3C) and one "living standard" (HTML5) where people can glom on their kitchen-sink proposals. Since we cannot reach consensus on what ought to be "Standard Markdown" today, can the community reach consensus on "Historical Markdown"--of which I propose three working definitions? * Classic Markdown: The Markdown syntax or Markdown.pl implementation, as implemented by John Gruber, in 1.0.1, with all ambiguities, bugs, frustrations, and contradictions. [In cases that the syntax and the tool contradict, we come up with a way to resolve the contradictions.] * Original Markdown: The Markdown syntax or Markdown.pl implementation, as implemented by John Gruber, in 1.0.2b7, with as many of the ambiguities, bugs, frustrations, and contradictions fixed as he actually fixed (or failed to fix) them. Aka "Markdown Web Dingus". * Idealized Markdown (aka Historical Standard Markdown): The Markdown that everyone can agree is the way Markdown "should have been" back when there was One True Markdown. Basically this is Original Markdown with its faults duly recognized and corrected...many of these faults having been corrected in practice in divergent implementations (Markdown Extra etc.) but never officially recognized in Original Markdown. I cannot say which of these three is better...but by recognizing these three as common points, we can then start to compare on the same page. -Sean ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
