What markup format do you prefer?
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@julianlam said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
/text/ : Italics
But what if you want to type a regular expression?
/regex/
? What if you want to italicise your regular expression?Shit, I broke your parser already.
Isn't that why ghod invented
\
's?
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@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Isn't that why ghod invented
\
's?I know! Use
\this\
for italics so as to avoid ambiguity with inlined regular expressions.
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Isn't that why ghod invented
\
's?I know! Use
\this\
for italics so as to avoid ambiguity with inlined regular expressions.Ah, but. Windows file paths...
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But if you want my quixotic idea:
Define a subset of HTML, BBCode and Markdown (and any other sufficiently similar formats) that maps to each other cleanly. For example,
[b]text[/b]
,<b>text</b>
and**text**
are all perfectly identical, so expand that as much as you can.Implement that in a forum. Give an easily accessible option to switch between the three or more formats, so that each user sees both their posts and other people's (quoted) posts in that specific format (backend format is an implementation detail).
Now, this doesn't really improve much yet, you could argue that it actually makes things more confusing for the user. But, it creates a nice (if limited) infrastructure for new languages (and WYSIWYG editors) to compete in fair conditions, so that newer and better languages can appear and replace the older ones.
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Here's my quixotic idea: add Start-of-Bold, Start-of-Link, End-of-Subscript, etc. to Unicode.
It would be more useful than adding RTL-Hexa-Space or Levitating-Angry-Poop-Tone-69.
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@zecc Unicode would never add this because they're still pretending to be a "plain text" format.
So instead they added 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤, ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗ, and many other variations of every character. Genius.
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@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Get a better keyboard?
Not that I have a whole lot of use for what you showed in the screenshots (I don't post from my phone all that much) but I'll bite: what's the name of the keyboard you're showing?
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@anonymous234 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@zecc Unicode would never add this because they're still pretending to be a "plain text" format.
So instead they added 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤, ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗ, and many other variations of every character. Genius.
A lot of them have specific meanings instead of just being bold or italic or whatever.
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
A lot of them have specific meanings instead of just being bold or italic or whatever.
Particularly when talking about mathematics, where all of these have different meanings: 𝐢, 𝑖, 𝒾, 𝓲, 𝔦, 𝖎, 𝕚, 𝗂, 𝗶, 𝘪, 𝙞, and 𝚒.
…
Hmm, there's more than I thought.
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@anonymous234 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Why not the good ideas thread?
Because normal people hate Lisp syntax, guaranteeing that the idea will never be adopted.
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@gurth said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@anonymous234 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
I want one that uses pseudo-LISP syntax.
(b bold text (i bold and italic)) (link http://google.com/ hyperlinked text)
Why not RTF, in that case? Then if an effect applies to only one word, you could save on typing the brackets: {\b bold text} for everything between the brackets, or \b bold text for just the word “bold”.
@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
I quite like markdown, as I can get what I want with minimal typing in a huge majority of cases. BBCode has almost zero advantages over HTML (except for being a little easier to sanitise) but markdown is substantially terser in the normal case. I like that as a user as it lowers the effort for me to go from typing to result. The limitations of markdown I can live with on a forum as I don't really want to produce anything with truly complex formatting here.
I'm a lot less happy with markdown in other, more formal technical applications such as documentation, where the additional power of (the otherwise-excluded features of) HTML are more useful. But that's OK. I'm not writing documentation or academic papers or quarter-end reports here. ;)
I've also tried various wiki formats (and there's lots of different ones) and while they're mostly OK I guess, they're not all that great either. And mediawiki's formats get really complicated; if you want a programming language that also formats text, MW is for you, but the consequence of that is that you've got to debug your messages… :aintnobodygottimeforthat.gif:
So..Web LATEX?
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@antiquarian said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@anonymous234 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Why not the good ideas thread?
Because normal people hate Lisp syntax, guaranteeing that the idea will never be adopted.
I would take offense to that, but, you did say normal people, which means that you weren't counting me there, so...
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@parody said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Get a better keyboard?
Not that I have a whole lot of use for what you showed in the screenshots (I don't post from my phone all that much) but I'll bite: what's the name of the keyboard you're showing?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.klye.ime.latin&hl=en_GB
Was the first one I found that had Dvorak layout, used it ever since.
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@antiquarian said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Because normal people hate Lisp syntax
Do normal people even encounter Lisp syntax enough to hate it?
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@anonymous234 Some do. Where do you think the Lots of Irritating Silly Parentheses jokes came from?
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@pie_flavor said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Dvorak
Ew.
It's actually easier on mobile (alternating thumbs.)
Once you've succumbed to how easy it is, that is...
Now. About
vi
andemacs
...
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@gąska said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Now, how multiparagraph points work?
Weirdly.
- If there's no blank line,
it appears to work fine. - But if there's a blank line,
it breaks out the list.
- You can also
use something like
or‍
to get "empty" lines.
- If there's no blank line,
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@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat Let's build a Markdown that makes some slight modicum of sense:
*text* : Boldface **text** : Boldface with increased font size /text/ : Italics _text_ : Underline -text- : Strikethrough -- : Emdash
These all seem like good suggestions to me except -text- for strikethrough. Hyphens are just too common in too many places. ~text~ seems good for it, though.
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@julianlam said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
/text/ : Italics
But what if you want to type a regular expression?
/regex/
?Escape it like you just did.
What if you want to italicise your regular expression?
Put the formatting outside the escaped sequence:
italics
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@djls45 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@gąska said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Now, how multiparagraph points work?
Weirdly.
- If there's no blank line,
it appears to work fine. - But if there's a blank line,
it breaks out the list.
- You can also
use something like
or‍
to get "empty" lines.
True, but that's part of the issue many have with Markdown: having to use stuff like HTML entities in order to get what you want. Most people won't know tricks like that. And that's what too many people don't get. The general public aren't techy like us: they're idiots who ignore everything meant to keep them safe purely because all they want is to see the funny cat videos. They're not going to understand
‍
. Heck, most of them barely understand the difference between the Internet and Google.
- If there's no blank line,
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Heck, most of them barely understand the difference between the Internet and Google.
Google's the one with the diesel engine.
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
True, but that's part of the issue many have with Markdown: having to use stuff like HTML entities in order to get what you want.
The real issue is that some people want Markdown to be a full-service markup language, and that's what it isn't. It's a greatly simplified thing for use in those cases where you just want to bash a few lines out and get them posted. It's spark of greatness is in not trying to do more than that.
And I've got a decent on-screen keyboard available for when I need really fancy characters.
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
The real issue is that some people want Markdown to be a full-service markup language, and that's what it isn't.
That is also true. But even within that narrower scope, Markdown still has several issues. many of which have been outlined in this thread and the forum at large.
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Markdown still has several issues
… that most people don't care about. That's the problem with your argument, it's coming across as pendantic nitpicking, not as a genuine call to action. The alternatives are either worse from a user perspective (plain text? HTML? BBCode?) or require a complex-to-deploy GUI to make posts. You appear to think that it is obvious that there's something better; it really doesn't seem that obvious to me given that we want something really simple to enter. I'm hoping that you'll explain why the alternative you propose is actually better for the simple-forum-post use-case.
(There are better choices for complicated documents. This is not that case.)
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
That's the problem with your argument, it's coming across as pendantic nitpicking, not as a genuine call to action.
This is a general discussion, not a call to action.
@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
You appear to think that it is obvious that there's something better
I never claimed anything remotely like that. All I did was ask what people prefer.
@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
I'm hoping that you'll explain why the alternative you propose is actually better for the simple-forum-post use-case.
I've not proposed an alternative.
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@djls45 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat Let's build a Markdown that makes some slight modicum of sense:
*text* : Boldface **text** : Boldface with increased font size /text/ : Italics _text_ : Underline -text- : Strikethrough -- : Emdash
These all seem like good suggestions to me except -text- for strikethrough. Hyphens are just too common in too many places. ~text~ seems good for it, though.
Plus something for verbatim text; markdown's `` are IMO not a bad choice.
Another question is whether you want to include a way of escaping unwanted formatting or not (IMO, yes, but I'd also like it to work predictably. For instance, here, having a visible ` inside of a ``-block seems ... nontrivial.)
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@cvi said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@djls45 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat Let's build a Markdown that makes some slight modicum of sense:
*text* : Boldface **text** : Boldface with increased font size /text/ : Italics _text_ : Underline -text- : Strikethrough -- : Emdash
These all seem like good suggestions to me except -text- for strikethrough. Hyphens are just too common in too many places. ~text~ seems good for it, though.
Plus something for verbatim text; markdown's `` are IMO not a bad choice.
Another question is whether you want to include a way of escaping unwanted formatting or not (IMO, yes, but I'd also like it to work predictably. For instance, here, having a visible ` inside of a ``-block seems ... nontrivial.)
Hmmm... \
these `` don't \`` work \
`as ` might be expected
This ` works, though
:
```This <single backtick> works, though```
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
It's spark of greatness is in not trying to do more than that.
"Mark of genius?" You mean copying what people did on Usenet for decades, making it significantly worse, then acting like you are God of all invention? If that's genius, then hand me the dunce cap.
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Markdown still has several issues
… that most people don't care about.
Here's an issue many will care about: trying to bold inserted punctuation.
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
James**,** while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
James**,** while John had had **"**had**",** had had **"**had had**"; "**had had**"** had had a better effect on the teacher.
And then there's this:
Beware the difference between compliment and complement.
Beware the difference between comp_li_ment and comp_le_ment.Two syntaxes for the same feature, yet behave very differently.
If this is the mark of genius, I'd hate to see the mark of stupidity.
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@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
… that most people don't care about.
Again an assertion about Markdown and "most people" with zero evidence backing it.
Prove what you just typed. Prove it with data.
"We're all science-y computer science people writing code on science-y science computers."
"How about using science to prove your markup language is better than the alternatives?"
"No! Make shit up! Asspull! Write completely unsubstantiated bullshit in web forums!"@dkf said in What markup format do you prefer?:
The alternatives are either worse from a user perspective (plain text? HTML? BBCode?)
Another statement that requires evidence.
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@djls45 Yeah, that's about it. I stared at it for a while, and the results seem more or less random. I don't care too much about the markup format, as long as it has a somewhat predictable behaviour. (But that's probably too much to ask for of 2017-webbly apps.)
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@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Here's an issue many will care about: trying to bold inserted punctuation.
That's a relative minority issue. I'm of the opinion that Markdown is optimising for the 95% case, not the edge cases. If you're someone who likes messing around at the edge cases, that's going to be intensely annoying. But there's a lot of productive stuff that really doesn't need that sort of thing.
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@dkf The thing about edge cases is people inevitably stumble into them. And with Markdown, that's a lot of edge cases.
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we should disable text and make everyone post image macros so the formatting is always the same.
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@lorne-kates said in What markup format do you prefer?:
we should disable text and make everyone post image macros so the formatting is always the same.
We need some form of emoji-based markup, e.g. for bold
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@pie_flavor said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@lorne-kates said in What markup format do you prefer?:
we should disable text and make everyone post image macros so the formatting is always the same.
We need some form of emoji-based markup, e.g. for bold
What markup will we use for denoting emojis?
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@pie_flavor said in What markup format do you prefer?:
I don't even know you that well, but I guess buy me a few drinks first?
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@djls45 said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@gąska said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Now, how multiparagraph points work?
Weirdly.
- If there's no blank line,
it appears to work fine. - But if there's a blank line,
it breaks out the list.
- You can also
use something like
or‍
to get "empty" lines.
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Why are you people
overcomplicating this
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so much?
- If there's no blank line,
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@ben_lubar said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Why are you people
overcomplicating thisso much?
Says the guy who created robots to pay Dwarf Fortress. You guys gone done and complicated it up in here beyond measure.
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You know, I've been trying Wikipedia's WYSIWYG editor recently and I really like it. It takes a few seconds to load, but after that it's fast, the interface is super nice and usable, has every feature you could think of, integrates properly with the browser's spell checker, the input actually looks identical to the result, and it handles super long articles with tons of tables and complex stuff without a hitch.
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@boomzilla said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@gąska said in What markup format do you prefer?:
The horror!
I'm glad you're coming around to sense.
More seriously, though, the opening / closing brackets plus slash drive me nuts. I dunno...call it a form of typing dyslexia but I often have difficulty getting that stuff correct.
Plus, try typing this on mobile.
That's something that markdown does well and other formats not really. But a lot of the markdown-bashers don't care about mobile, for some reason…
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@gąska said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@raceprouk said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@blakeyrat said in What markup format do you prefer?:
If I needed a list, why would I (the naive user) type an asterisk? Especially if I'd just established in your previous paragraph that an asterisk is used to denote italics. (Or, from my previous experience in other applications, would expect it to denote boldface.)
IIRC, it also makes a list if you use hyphens.
- A list
- with hyphens
Now, how multiparagraph points work? How sublists work? Have you tried having multiple separate numbered lists in one post?
Why the fuck would you want that? It's a forum, not a system for writing publishable documents.
Markdown is nice and easy for simple usecases. Forum is such a usecase.
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@kt_ is there any markup format / method of formatting text that works on mobile? Typing tags etc is shitty, and text selection + WSYWIG editor buttons is also shitty because text selection is still fiddly after 10 years.
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@pjh said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@parody said in What markup format do you prefer?:
Symbol, Other Symbols, [, Letters, B, Symbols, Other Symbols, ],
Get a better keyboard?
Long tap on the black bit here
gives me
Cursor in between the brackets.
Alternatively long tap on...
Yeah, this doesn't solve the actual issue. This is an over complicated solution to something that should be easy.
I'm extremely thankful @julianlam understands that.
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@bb36e said in What markup format do you prefer?:
@kt_ is there any markup format / method of formatting text that works on mobile? Typing tags etc is shitty, and text selection + WSYWIG editor buttons is also shitty because text selection is still fiddly after 10 years.
Markdown is the least shitty, because all you really want are asterisks. If you want to write some code, a backtick can be too much work, but that's a minority case. Sure, it's not ideal, on iOS all of these (asterisks, underscores, backticks and square brackets) are on the third layout (numbers -> symbols), but that's something one can live with.
But HTML and BBCode are the worst, too much alternating.
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@kt_ alternatively, we fix this in hardware and everyone brings back hardware keyboards on phones