adamhyde

"I don't see how using markdown is any worse than using a typewriter."...errrr...i think we have moved past the typewriter somewhat

Its just a catch phrase. Get over it. Read the article, it makes a whole lot of sense and is a very sensible approach.

Thats like saying BP invented oil. To claim a plaintext only comment, sans markdown syntax, as markdown is a big stretch to make. But I understand you will want to make that stretch inorder to justify the magic utility of the format. Thats a big whatever from me.

Anyway. Im not going to argue this further. Agreed to disagree.

sigh. plain text paragraphs cant be claimed to be invented by markdown. sorry. good try tho.

Yip. Feel much better :)

The link you are referring to is for a perl script to convert markdown to HTML. It is not markdown, the syntax, referred to in that article. You would have understood that if you read the next paragraph

"Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML. "

The article was about the former, your comment confused it with the later. Cheers.

paragraphs are plain text :)

Yes and notice how few have used it even here. Most replies are plain text.

haha :) yeah, the last few weeks scratched a few itches, thats for sure! But on the whole Im a positive chap and the posts are positive or (gasp) tongue in cheek :) Don't take it so personally! Thanks for your points, hope you do read some more of the blog but no worries if not.

I think tho that Markdown hasnt won the plain text battle - plain text has. Only a very small percentage of plain text docs are markdown...so small it wouldn't even count...

hi

Argh. My reply got burned by the server downtime. Just to say I dont have anything against the shell and plain text- I produced (facilitated) the production of numerous books around this topic including http://www.flossmanuals.net/command-line/

Glad you like reading markdown. I don't think that is a majority position though and I see markdown being promoted to a larger community at times that really wouldn't find it useful or nice to use.

Thanks for the tip. I added a few things this afternoon and didn't spell check :)

As for negative nelly, the post right after the markdown one is about an alternative (for a very specific context). But no matter, you're probably right, it might have been better to add a few alternatives to the end of the article.

hi, Adam here, I wrote the article. Really interesting comments. Just for the record, I am in favor of the command line tool, and I have also posted numerous articles on better alternatives :)