There appears to be many comments here, arguing that authoring web content in markdown is nothing new, and correctly so.
But this (along with md-page and mdwiki mentioned in other comments) is actually an interesting small twist on it. Regularly the conversion is done on the server side, and everything is published in html.
Here, you both author and publish in markdown.
What this library does, if I'm reading it correctly, it acts as polyfill that lets legacy evergreen browsers to consume the markdown files that you serve.
You can publish your content in a bit more simpler, yet still declarative format, without any javascript, and still make it accessible, in a properly rendered format, for evergreen browsers.
(Yes, you can still add javascript to markdown files, but it is relatively easy for the agent to just discard any javascript or html.)
The markdown is the source of truth here. No need for rendering everything twice for serving, once for html and once for markdown, and creating a point where their content might diverge.
It's straight out of gemini's playbook.
I think this is a wonderful idea, and if developed a bit further, and adopted more widely, could help push markdown to be a properly supported format in modern browsers.
The next question is, how would you get the second layer of github flavored markdown fluff (latex, mermaid, etc), that is generally not standardized, to be supported in browsers as well?
I think the largest barrier for FOSS is still that the greater public doesn't know about FOSS, at all, and even less at the concept level. Because FOSS largely is still not on the daily political agenda, there's no actual talk among the wider masses about the reasons why FOSS is important, or what it actually means. Without wider discussion it's harder for it to gain foothold, as it is very much a political question, when it comes to use of FOSS in government.
Although, this seems to be slowly changing. In Finland, YLE (the national broadcasting company) has recently been systematically bringing up the open source nature of the national Covid app in their reporting.
I think there's a larger cultural revolution waiting for its turn, behind the current open source revolution that has been happening so far mostly in the software field.
In its core, open source is a cultural thing, and maybe a political one, one that due to reasons that were, did found rooting and cultivation initially in the field of software. Regardless of its origins, it's a wider movement that could disrupt every aspect of content creation, if realized as such. E.g. the same discussion that is being had in this thread and in the original article, about FOSS in government, largely applies to a wide field of other types of content created by governments.
One of the larger, self created obstacles for open source lies in the definition itself. Open source is still being defined primarily in the realm of software, and through software. Names and definitions such as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) reprise this problem by anchoring the concept to the world of software, and in this case, it happens already in the name. Instead of FOSS, maybe we should be talking about FOS software?
I think the world could do well with a concept of open source that could be unleashed on all types of content created [1]. FOSS could probably do well, with the larger umbrella concept of FOS hitting daily discussion.
Interestingly, open source as a term doesn't have this package, as source can mean more than just source code.
[1] Creative commons already exists, but that's mainly a license, to be used in certain fields of content creation, not a wider definition for the concept.
But this (along with md-page and mdwiki mentioned in other comments) is actually an interesting small twist on it. Regularly the conversion is done on the server side, and everything is published in html.
Here, you both author and publish in markdown.
What this library does, if I'm reading it correctly, it acts as polyfill that lets legacy evergreen browsers to consume the markdown files that you serve.
You can publish your content in a bit more simpler, yet still declarative format, without any javascript, and still make it accessible, in a properly rendered format, for evergreen browsers.
(Yes, you can still add javascript to markdown files, but it is relatively easy for the agent to just discard any javascript or html.)
The markdown is the source of truth here. No need for rendering everything twice for serving, once for html and once for markdown, and creating a point where their content might diverge.
It's straight out of gemini's playbook.
I think this is a wonderful idea, and if developed a bit further, and adopted more widely, could help push markdown to be a properly supported format in modern browsers.
The next question is, how would you get the second layer of github flavored markdown fluff (latex, mermaid, etc), that is generally not standardized, to be supported in browsers as well?