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Markdown reaches 1.0, and I stand corrected
When Markdown (a text-to-HTML formatting system) debuted in March, I was skeptical.
“What about Textile?” I asked. At the time, I was a huge fan of Textile. And Markdown seemed like little more than a tweak of Textile, which is a capable and useful system for writing HTML. The syntax is very similar, although some things in Markdown make a little more sense. Aaron Swartz and I sparred about the differences via email, and even as I installed John Gruber’s Markdown plugin for MovableType and started to use it, I was still unconvinced that it was better than Textile.
Turns out I was wrong. Aaron said something in one of his emails that I haven’t forgotten: “Textile is nice, but Markdown is nicer.” It’s mostly small things, like:
Ordered lists, which are created with Markdown by actually typing the numbers. Genius, and much better than Textile’s pound signs (#).
In Markdown,
strongtext (like this**this is strong**) actually looks stronger than it’s weak counter part,emphasis(_this is emphasized_).Headings have visual prominence, thanks to “lines” made up of equal signs and hypens. Textile only gives us
h1,h2, and so on.
Of course, the Markdown syntax can tell you all of this much more clearly.
Anyway, my aim isn’t to say how Textile is no good (it is — I use it every day on Basecamp and it’s great), but to talk about how good Markdown is. It’s based on the way people write email, which makes it very easy to pick up. And at every turn, the syntax makes sense. Things look like what they mean, and this is no coincidence. In fact, I’ve gotten better at “formatting” my emails since I started using Markdown. For me, it’s better to use the same conventions in all my writing rather than try to remember a bunch of systems.
Now Markdown has reached 1.0 (just outta beta!), and I am a dedicated fan.* Like most things worth loving, it just took me some time to warm up to it.
* The fact that John Gruber is my hero and I wore a “Daring Fireball” shirt around Chicago yesterday has nothing to do with this, by the way.