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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Markdown. Its only in tech-spaces that its preferred, but it should be used everywhere. You can even write full books and academic papers in markdown (maybe with only a few extensions like latex / mathjax).
Instead, in a lot of fields, people are passing around variants of microsoft word documents with weird formatting and no standardization around headings, quotes, and comments.
Markdown is terrible as a standard because every parser works differently and when you try to standardize it (CommonMark, etc.), you find out that there are a bajillion edge cases, leading to an extremely bloated specification.
Agreed in principle, but in practice, I find it's rarely a problem.
While editing, we pick an export tool for all editors and stick to it.
Once the document is stable, we export it to HTML or PDF and it'll be stable forever.
Most ppl have settled on Commonmark luckily, including us.
Commonmark leaves some stuff like tables unspecified. That creates the need for another layer like GFM or mistletoe. Standardization is not a strong point for markdown.
I believe commonmark tries to specify a minimum baseline spec, and doesn't try to to expand beyond that. It can be frustrating bc we'd like to see tables, superscripts, spoilers, and other things standardized, but I can see why they'd want to keep things minimal.
Asciidoc is a good example of why everything should be standardized. While markdown has multiple implementations, any document is tied to just one implementation. Asciidoc has just one implementation. But when the standard is ready, you should be able to switch implementations seamlessly.
Have you read the CommonMark specification? It’s very complex for a language that’s supposed to be lightweight.
What's the alternative? We either have everything specified well, or we'll have a million slightly incompatible implementations. I'll take the big specification. At least it's not HTML5.
An alternative would be a language with a simpler syntax. Something like XML, but less verbose.
And then we'll be back to a hundred slightly incompatible versions. You need detailed specifications to avoid that. Why not stick to markdown?
Not if the language is standardized from the start.
Sure it will. It will be a detailed language from the start.