Re:Ask YC: Textile vs Markdown
by tptacek on Monday May 12, 2008 @02:48AM
(#187353)
You're a bit off on the WYSIWIG thing. Rich text editors don't generate Markdown, but they can be configured to generate extremely regular, limited HTML, which can be converted to Markdown easily (a la HumaneText). Computers are good at stuff like that.
Typical end users dislike raw HTML. Most of them don't know what a <code> tag is. Markdown (though probably not Textile) is superior to HTML for end-users in that you don't even need to know how it works to get better-than-raw-text results.
My company's product does Markdown, and my philosophy is this: tens of thousands of people edit Wikipedia. Most of them are not particularly computer savvy. Wikipedia has perhaps the most baroque and ineffecient markup syntax possible, and people still tolerate it. So, there's the lower bar. By all means, exceed it, but don't obsess.
Typical end users dislike raw HTML. Most of them don't know what a <code> tag is. Markdown (though probably not Textile) is superior to HTML for end-users in that you don't even need to know how it works to get better-than-raw-text results.
My company's product does Markdown, and my philosophy is this: tens of thousands of people edit Wikipedia. Most of them are not particularly computer savvy. Wikipedia has perhaps the most baroque and ineffecient markup syntax possible, and people still tolerate it. So, there's the lower bar. By all means, exceed it, but don't obsess.