#Markdown Is a Disaster: Why and What to Do Instead
https://karl-voit.at/2025/08/17/Markdown-disaster/

Here's my article where I summarize the subtle and no so subtle downsides when you choose Markdown for your information instead of a different markup syntax that doesn't come with all the downsides of #MD.

#publicvoit #orgdown #orgmode #LML #pandoc #rst #restructuredtext #asciidoc #Wikitext #BBCode #Creole #Crossmark #Djot #CommonMark #lockin

Markdown Is a Disaster: Why and What to Do Instead

Markdown Is a Disaster: Why and What to Do Instead

public voit - Web-page of Karl Voit

@cks

I remember when MediaWiki's parser underwent a major overhaul, some years ago.

At the time I thought how awful it must be to parse (MediaWiki) wikitext, given the terrible things that it does in the name of accommodating humans.

I had been musing at the time on the idea of a MediaWiki wikitext to #HTML convertor for static WWW sites, so that one could author in #MediaWiki wikitext and run make. But I concluded that one would learn through Second System Effect and not begin there at all.

Allowing for embedded HTML in #wikitext brings its own problems, such as the question of whether one first converts the other markup to its HTML equivalent and parses that, which in turn means one has to lex the HTML twice, once before transclusion, just to find the transclusion markup correctly, and then again afterwards.

And of course because of embedded HTML, the rule about it not being lexable by regular expressions, holds.

Unlike the centre. (-:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/340790

#DocBookXML

RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

I need to match all of these opening tags: <p> <a href="foo"> But not self-closing tags: <br /> <hr class="foo" /> I came up with this and wanted to make

Stack Overflow

Should I dare to do a "why #Markdown is one of the worst lightweight markup syntax languages there is"-session at a UX/UI-dominant #barcamp? 😜

C'mon, do push me over that cliff! 😆

Background: https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ 👉 it's related but would be a different focus since I won't push #orgdown that much - people can be happier with other LMLs as well as long as it's not the #MD hell. (Sneak preview: I'm writing a long article on all the MD issues in order to explain it once and for all since the Mastodon discussions are really annoying to me.)

#LML #AsciiDoc #rSt #WikiText #orgmode

Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text

Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text

public voit - Web-page of Karl Voit
Extension talk:InputBox - MediaWiki

MediaWiki

Fandom/ #Wikia support: "Sure, we I'll *try*¹ to gelp you with your request."

¹ in the event that 1 + 1 = 3, but don’t say, there's no case in which we'd help you

#amCoding #WikiText #Wiki #WikiCode #amProgramming

Fandom/ #Wikia prefers to use their anxieties as an subterfuge rather than going to therapy

#Wiki #WikiText #WikiCode #amCoding #amProgramming

Get yourself someone who embraces you like Fandom/ #Wikia embraces their paranoia …

#amCoding #amProgramming #WikiCode #WikiText #Wiki

Is it possible to group by an included template value using the #MediaWiki extension DynamicPageList3 in #WikiCode/ #WikiText like this:

so it results in

| Topic | Title |
| --------- | ------- |
| | Z |
| A | Y |
| | X |
| --------- | ------- |
| | W |
| B | V |
| | U |

1/2

#amCoding #amProgramming #FediHelp

Non so cosa è peggio: che non riesco a trovare in giro #editor grafici decenti di #tabelle per l’editoria #web, che crearle con roba come #HTML, #WikiText, Markdown, ecc è #scomodo oltre il sopportabile (non si vede a colpo d’occhio che intersezione di riga e colonna si sta modificando), o che #TiddlyWiki si dimostra anche questa volta un #tremendo #rabbithole in cui perdersi a #sviluppare #visualizzazioni #avanzate con tutte quelle funzioni #esoteriche integrate, anche per le tabelle. Ho creato ora, per questa #tabella che sto costruendo, una #macro che integra la modifica dei #dati direttamente nella versione renderizzata, così non devo usare scomodi linguaggi di marcatura. …e funziona, ma solo ora mi rendo conto di dover trovare un modo di aggiungere righe e colonne in mezzo a quelle esistenti, e con la struttura dati che questa roba in automatico costruisce, fidatevi, non sarà facile. Ci impazzirò temo. L’ennesima mia #megafine. 💀️

Comunque, a dire il vero una piccola app l’ho trovata cercando: https://www.htmltables.io/. Fa modificare una tabella tramite anteprima #grafica (scarna ma adeguata), ma permette di copiare ed incollare (o modificare direttamente, ma a me non serve) il #codice HTML (anche lì, unico modo per spostare righe e colonne, non va dalla #GUI)… solo che, quest’ultimo passaggio è macchinoso, almeno a lungo termine, perché mi troverei a fare avanti e indietro tra modificare i dati e salvarli dove mi servono, quindi… ecco giustificato il trovare una #soluzione nativa alla mia #OcttKB. (Ci sarebbero poi i programmi di fogli di calcolo, ma ecco… non mi servono tutte le loro funzioni, devo solo disporre testo, quindi usare quella roba significherebbe bloat e sofferenza, tra UI disfunzionali su mobile e app in generale laggose.) 🤥️

https://octospacc.altervista.org/2024/02/04/1461/

#avanzate #codice #dati #editor #esoteriche #grafica #GUI #HTML #macro #megafine #OcttKB #rabbithole #scomodo #soluzione #sviluppare #tabella #tabelle #TiddlyWiki #tremendo #visualizzazioni #web #WikiText

HTML Table Generator — Build and Style Tables

Create responsive & accessible HTML tables using our free online HTML Table Generator—no coding skills required. Loved by 1000s of people each month.

#MediaWiki uses the #Pygments syntax highlighter to enable rich formatting of code blocks: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight

diskdance has submitted a pull request to add a lexer to support #wikitext markup: https://github.com/pygments/pygments/pull/2373

Hopefully it'll be in a release soon, to be used in on-wiki help pages and documentation!

(h/t to rundg for spotting)

Extension:SyntaxHighlight - MediaWiki

MediaWiki