Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comments?

Re:Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comme... by oftenwrong on Friday June 05, 2020 @04:08PM (#23433334)

HN does not often add new features. I assume this is the main reason HN has not added Markdown.

I would prefer that HN continues to NOT support Markdown. After all, the entire point of Markdown is that it should be readable in its unprocessed form [1]. Therefore, Markdown obviates its own utility: Why not just present the source text of a comment as-is? Why confuse non-savvy users with behaviour like collapsing line breaks [2]?

[1] "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions." https://web.archive.org/web/20040402182332/https://daringfir...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677936

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comme... by RivieraKid on Saturday June 06, 2020 @10:39AM (#23439491)

First, the processed form is more readable than the unprocessed form. And second, when I write a comment here in Markdown, what is displayed is worse than unprocessed Markdown. For example lists:

- One - Two

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comme... by satvikpendem on Saturday June 06, 2020 @12:49PM (#23440472)

Lists require a new line between each item:

- One

- Two

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Re:Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News support Markdown in comme... by RivieraKid on Saturday June 06, 2020 @03:19PM (#23441584)

Yeah, but it looks ugly, too much space between the items.

[ Parent | on HN ]