I think I may be missing the main usecase here but how come I see so many different markdown editors on here all the time? Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext, or with simple highlighting so what's the point?
Or am I just being one of those weirdos that's like "WHO NEEDS SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING YOU SCRUBS!"?
Just wildly speculating here (with some wishful thinking thrown in): maybe the intent is to indirectly encourage non-technical audiences to use git-based, public version control for authoring public and frequently revised documents.
For instance: imagine if federal legislation, and amendments to federal legislation, were published in this manner. You could examine diffs to see how passed (or proposed) amendments altered (or will alter) the law. You could even have a 'git blame' sort of feature that let you to see which members of congress voted for or against particular amendments. It would definitely aid political transparency, and make it easier for the public to participate in the legislative process.
Maybe. But I guess my hidden objective here would be to open up the legislation making process to the public. At the moment (at least in Australia), the best we can do in this regard is 'exposure draft' consultation.
Basically a draft of the legislation is put on some consultation website, and people can send in big long essays via email. The participants don't see each others' comments, it's just a 1-1 type relationship between the government department and the 'consultee'.
I'd like to see infrastructure that would allow:
(a) consultation participants to see and comment on each others' suggestions (think Greenpeace commenting on Shell's submission regarding fuel tax credits, and vice-versa); and
(b) for participants to be able to make pull-requests, forcing the government department to answer in the positive of negative and give reasons.
On the second point, under the current system they can simply put your submission through the shredder if they don't like your suggestions. By making it very public, government departments will feel strong pressure to acknowledge and respond in a reasoned way. Many government departments do a big song and dance about 'transparency'. I think this provides a concrete and actionable way to significantly increase this wonderful 'transparency' thing that I hear so much about.
> Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext
That is actually the main reason for markdown's existence [1], so I have the same issue with these editors. I don't understand attempts to hide the formatting.
"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."
I often like to preview how text works as I work on it.
e.g. if I bold this, does it look out of place
or to check that internal links work.
However, I currently just use my normal text editor and open the output in a browser (if compiling to html)/terminal (if compiling to man pages)/evince (if compiling to pdf)
Markdown is simple and easy to read to coders, and others with (for a lack of a better term) mathematical inclination.
It would be really awesome if we could get the current "Word for everything crowd" to use markdown too, and assistive WYSIWYG editors are a lot more attractive to them.
Being able to see what I write the same way as a reader would helps me empathize with them. Perhaps now I can have just one window open instead of Sublime Text + Marked.
Or am I just being one of those weirdos that's like "WHO NEEDS SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING YOU SCRUBS!"?