I quickly went through this thread and counted the “votes” for a native div syntax.
- Daniel Staal: If I have to pick one, I'd pick blockquote.
- Shahbaz Youssefi: About divs: the block quote looks pretty nice.
- John Gabriele: I think side-marking is the right choice for divs
- BP Jonsson: I definitely prefer surround marking
- Bernhard Weichel: My preferences would be 1. surround-marking 2. side-marking
- ousia: use surround-marking
- Nick Moffitt: I did feel that the blockquote syntax was a great visual cue
- me (mb21): I favour surround-marking
The result:
- blockquote/side-marking: 4
- surround-marking: 4
- (Plus two or three advocating for HTML-syntax for now)
Note that no-one is a fan of indented-blocks. Some arguments in favour of each idea:
Side-marking:
- more readable for long sections (because it’s always obvious that you’re in a div-environment, even if the section is longer than the height of your screen)
- more local (removing one line doesn’t change large parts of your document)
Surround-marking:
- more readable for short sections (because of the almost-line-long surrounding markers)
- doesn’t require a decent editor to write easily
- better for copy’n’pasting / wrapping existing stuff in a div