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I'm still upset that Markdown ended up getting all the mindshare. AsciiDoc is so much nicer.

Ringz 2y ago
I'm still upset that Markdown ended up getting all the mindshare and doesn’t evolve. All the fragmentation through different markdown flavors doesn’t help.
- fwip 2y ago
  Evolution in the biological world usually looks a lot like fragmentation, at least in the short term.
  - Ringz 2y ago
    You are right. It would be interesting to compare evolution from a computer scientific and biological point of view. To find out if they are similar… I believe that natural evolution makes it easier to let the bad branches die out.
    - bandyaboot 2y ago
      We need a specification for the forced extinction of markup languages that fail to gain traction.
- threatofrain 2y ago
  The original core markdown being privately owned and frozen doomed it to having a politically funny future.
aspyct 2y ago
I'm happy that something at all got all the mindshare. Otherwise we'd still each be using something different. Markdown is perfectly usable.
everforward 2y ago
AsciiDoc is much nicer, but has the unfortunate flaw of having basically one implementation and it's in Ruby (the JS one is just transpiled, the Java one runs on JRuby, not sure about Go and Haskell). They don't even have a Python library, which basically guarantees that AsciiDoc won't be taught in colleges. I like AsciiDoc, but not nearly enough to mess around with installing Ruby and Gems and then having to do the same for anyone else at work that needs to build the docs for whatever reason. Ruby is basically a non-starter for me in general. Dependency management and interpreter versioning is a pain in the ass for interpreted languages, so I'd rather have as few as possible on my system. I've already got Perl and Python installed by default, I'd rather not add a third.
- pbronez 2y ago
  Looks like they’re making progress on that since the Eclipse Foundation took over AsciiDoc. There are now Golang and Haskell processors https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse-wg/asciidoc-wg/asciidoc.org/-/blob/main/awesome-asciidoc.adoc#convert https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse-wg/asciidoc-wg/asciidoc.o...
  - everforward 2y ago
    Ooh, that’s exciting news. I would love to use acidic, I’ve just been waiting for them to give me a reason. It’s a long shot, but if GitHub/GitLab added render support for AsciiDoc my life would be complete. Regardless, it’s impressive and awesome progress.

I'm still upset that Markdown ended up getting all the mindshare and doesn’t evolve. All the fragmentation through different markdown flavors doesn’t help.

fwip 2y ago
Evolution in the biological world usually looks a lot like fragmentation, at least in the short term.
- Ringz 2y ago
  You are right. It would be interesting to compare evolution from a computer scientific and biological point of view. To find out if they are similar… I believe that natural evolution makes it easier to let the bad branches die out.
  - bandyaboot 2y ago
    We need a specification for the forced extinction of markup languages that fail to gain traction.
threatofrain 2y ago
The original core markdown being privately owned and frozen doomed it to having a politically funny future.

aspyct 2y ago

I'm happy that something at all got all the mindshare. Otherwise we'd still each be using something different. Markdown is perfectly usable.

everforward 2y ago

AsciiDoc is much nicer, but has the unfortunate flaw of having basically one implementation and it's in Ruby (the JS one is just transpiled, the Java one runs on JRuby, not sure about Go and Haskell). They don't even have a Python library, which basically guarantees that AsciiDoc won't be taught in colleges. I like AsciiDoc, but not nearly enough to mess around with installing Ruby and Gems and then having to do the same for anyone else at work that needs to build the docs for whatever reason. Ruby is basically a non-starter for me in general. Dependency management and interpreter versioning is a pain in the ass for interpreted languages, so I'd rather have as few as possible on my system. I've already got Perl and Python installed by default, I'd rather not add a third.

pbronez 2y ago
Looks like they’re making progress on that since the Eclipse Foundation took over AsciiDoc. There are now Golang and Haskell processors https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse-wg/asciidoc-wg/asciidoc.org/-/blob/main/awesome-asciidoc.adoc#convert https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse-wg/asciidoc-wg/asciidoc.o...
- everforward 2y ago
  Ooh, that’s exciting news. I would love to use acidic, I’ve just been waiting for them to give me a reason. It’s a long shot, but if GitHub/GitLab added render support for AsciiDoc my life would be complete. Regardless, it’s impressive and awesome progress.