uvtc · HackerTrans

My understanding is that battery capacity is the issue; it's usually above the max allowed on the plane. This company makes a snap-together battery https://ebikes.ca/product-info/grin-products/ligo10x-battery... where each individual module is below the limit and so the pack can be broken down and shipped individually and separately.

uvtc

4 anni fadiscuss

> I honestly don't get why Markdown became preferred in most projects over AsciiDoc.

I think the primary reason is because Markdown is prettier to read (and also secondarily because it's good enough).

There are lots of markup formats, but markdown is probably the easiest on the eyes.

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

I think the reasons for those choices are:

* It's very uncommon to want your output text actually underlined.

* If you really do want underlining, just use <u>this</u>, since it's fine to put raw html in Markdown source.

* The most common way folks express emphasis is probably with ✱asterisks✱ (HN won't let me backslash-escape the *). A less-common alternative is to use _underscores_ (though I rarely see that anymore these days). Maybe the distant third most-common way was with /slashes/. I guess Gruber had to draw the line somewhere and just support the first two most common ways to write it. That seems reasonable.

Another reason to not use slashes for emphasis: using them might interfere (or at least cause headaches) with writing directory names, fractions 1/2, and "and/or" wordings.

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

I'm not so sure what's needed here is a spec.

What people really want is for all Markdown implementations to be basically the same so they don't have to learn any implementation-specific ideosyncrasies to switch from one to another.

The problem though, as I see it, tends to go away under certain circumstances. And the circumstances, I think, are these:

* If you've got a strong implementation, robust, actively-maintained, and runs fast,

* is easy to obtain, install, and use,

* is well tested and well documented, and

* has just the right blend of sensible additions to the syntax (for example, tables, def lists, LaTeX math, etc.) --- done tastefully,

then folks will just use that, model their own implementations after that, and just overall start considering that to be the standard.

I think this has been slowly and steadily happening with Pandoc.

And, aside from all that, two additional "killer features" that Pandoc seems to have over other implementations:

1. it can convert to/from other doc markup formats, thus making it easy to just convert your existing docs to pandoc-markdown and then use that as your master source format to generate other formats you might need; and

2. with its carefully-chosen set of additional features, it has been slowly proving itself capable of being a replacement for raw LaTeX for certain types of longer technical documents.

My understanding is that there's even some features in the works (for the next release) for converting between markdown dialects --- which would make it even easier to convert markdown files of various flavors into plain standard pandoc-markdown.

So, if you're looking for a standard, I'd suggest that it's for the most part already here. :)

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

FYI, Pandoc uses ~~two tildes~~ for strikeout syntax.

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

Using Pandoc, what my habit has become is have the first line at the top of the file be title metadata:

    % Title Goes Here

then make subsequent headings go ahead and start at h1 (rather than h2):

    Some h1
    =======

This puts an `<h1 class="title">Title</h1>` at the top, with regular unadorned h1's further down the page. So, if you like, you can style the title h1 differently from the other h1's.

It breaks the soft rule of having only one h1 on a page, but otoh looks good, and doesn't require me to go to h4 or h5 very often, so I can live with it. :)

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

I look at it like this: [this] looks a bit like a button you might press (or a link you might click). It looks like what it does.

(this) looks like something you'd whisper off to the side --- to add to the conversation. For example, "That picture is nice (but it needs more trees).".

So links go like: [this is the thing you click](and btw, this is where it leads).

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

Somewhat related: Pandoc supports delimited ("fenced") blocks as well, but as an alternative allows you to use tildes

    ~~~python
    print "hi"
    ~~~

rather than backticks

    ```python
    print "hi"
    ```

My own 2 cents: I like the more symmetrical tildes.

Anyhow though, yes, I agree; it's great that github supports delimited/fenced syntax-highlighted code blocks and renders .md files there automatically.

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

Pandoc supports using a backslash at the end of a line to insert a line-break.

uvtc

14 anni fadiscuss

I wrote up a little comparison of reST and Pandoc-Markdown, http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/doc-notes/markdown-and-re... , which might be of interest to some.

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