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   Christian Lynbech (mapcar@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Monday, 27-Jul-2026 01:31:40 JST Christian Lynbech

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs Not that I am a fan of markdown, but could you explain a bit what kind of improved UIs you are thinking of?

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     Raven667 (raven667@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Jul-2026 02:07:47 JST Raven667

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I don't know that Markdown is terrible, it is intended to translate directly into HTML so while it can do only a subset of what HTML is capable of (most of core HTML document fearures but nothing for HTML app UIs) its simpler and more ergonomic for editing as plain text, without the verbosity and exposure to non-document tags/attributes of directly authoring HTML. There is a real ergonomic reason that pretty much every wiki, the kind of document management app which was the core reason HTML was invented in the first place, immediately developed a plain text non-HTML language for authors.

     That said, maybe there exists the possibility that a GUI/TUI document editor could be designed that exposed the raw power of tags and attributes explicitly enclosing regions in a strict tree (like WordPerfect reveal-codes) but was usable enough to displace plain text editors, or at least to provide a path to augment plain text editors with a rich text mode.

     I do take it as a signal that such a thing hasn't caught on to mean that it probably just doesn't match well with how people want to conceptualize and edit docs. Kind of how people really dont use XSLT to template structured docs and instead template strings with Jinja or whatever.

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     Tech Tangents (techtangents@dialup.space)'s status on Monday, 27-Jul-2026 02:09:25 JST Tech Tangents

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs
     I think it's more of a social problem. I feel Markdown is mostly fine (nesting headers is bad) when you use it as intended, making plain text documents that have some syntax flavor sprinkled in. I like how vim can do some light terminal codes for bold, italic, color, etc with it

     It is a problem is when people are treating github as their home page and trying to use it as a replacement for HTML instead. I agree that if you are using a WSIWYG editor for markdown it is a poor choice

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     Tech Tangents (techtangents@dialup.space)'s status on Monday, 27-Jul-2026 08:36:49 JST Tech Tangents

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs
     I definitely agree that it gets used in the wrong places. Discord always surprises me by using it. My preferred usage of it doesn't extend being text files.

     It is kind of sad that all the web 2.0 rich HTML editors have been thrown out for just markdown.

     (I didn't know about the creator issues, that is unfortunate)

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     sammypanda (sammypanda@aus.social)'s status on Monday, 27-Jul-2026 10:56:26 JST sammypanda

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs isn't a UI always going to be platform specific though? markdown is just like a semantic, which also means nobody has to rely on if the UI implemented accessibility.

     I like when whatever the editor is has markdown, but it makes it easy to learn what does what (i.e. a UI which just adds the corresponding markdown notation), and when you type it it shows the formatting it produces.