I'm with you on that, I can think of one counter example though, and that is when you have to write your MD in something like VS Code. Which uses the old-fashioned approach of source code pane and render pane. I strongly dislike that and usually try to get away with source-code view only. To be fair, they use a tiny bit of coloring, so it's not 100% plain text. And the better solution is to write your MD in any other MD editor except VSC, of course.
Re:Why I Prefer RST to Markdown
by red_admiral on Thursday August 01, 2024 @03:02PM
(#41132399)
When you're putting documentation in the same commit as the relevant code - which is good practice, at least around here - then it's often useful to be able to read not just markdown but a diff of markdown as plain text in ${editor}.
Re:Why I Prefer RST to Markdown
by BeFlatXIII on Friday August 02, 2024 @08:32AM
(#41138317)
> This said, something slightly more complex than Markdown while slightly more elegant, less chaotic and more readable than HTML sounds a great thing to have.
Revive Textile? It was one of the inspirations for MD, IIRC.
Do you really read Markdown in plain text editors? I only do occasionally. Most of the times I use tools like Obsidian, Typora, Markdown Monster etc.
HTML is just too bad for plain source reading relatively to Markdown and too complex for reliable mapping between what it is looks, what it means and what it is.
This said, something slightly more complex than Markdown while slightly more elegant, less chaotic and more readable than HTML sounds a great thing to have.
There certainly are cases where Makrdown seems the best choice - wherever simple plaintext editors are going to be used often. Nevertheless I doubt Markdown is the best choice for tools like Obsidian - perhaps people working on new projects of this kind should also take a look at rST or AsciiDoc.