[TUHS] Re: Proliferation of book print styles

["Åke Nordin" <ake.nordin@netia.se>]

On 2024-06-02 17:21, Michael Kjörling wrote:

> On 2 Jun 2024 08:39 -0400, from douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu (Douglas McIlroy):
>> In this regard, I still regret that Luca Cardelli and Mark
>> Manasse moved on from Bell Labs before they finished their dream of Blue, a
>> WYSIWYG editor for markup documents, I don't know yet whether that blue-sky
>> goal is achievable. (.docx may be seen as a ponderous latter-day attempt.
>> Does anyone know whether it has fostered tool use?)
> Does Markdown count?
>
> Especially when combined with LaTeX support for typesetting math, it's
> probably quite good enough for most peoples' needs outside of niche
> applications; and there are WYSIWYG editors (not just text editors
> with a preview, but actual WYSIWYG editors) which use Markdown as the
> storage format.
>
> Of course, what Markdown very specifically does _not_ even try to do
> is provide any strong presentation guarantees.

I haven't really participated in any real publishing endeavors
since the times of waxed sheets and scalpels, so I have precious
little firsthand experience with e.g. markdown, but I've read
quite the severe critique of its shortcomings. A prime example
is https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20170304230520 by
Ingo Schwarze, the main developer of mandoc together with Kristaps
Dzonsons.

This makes me believe that any WYSIWYG editor using markdown as
its storage format really uses some quite strict subset of it,
combined with its own incompatible extensions.

MfG,

-- 
Åke Nordin <ake.nordin@netia.se>, resident Net/Lunix/telecom geek.
Netia Data AB, Stockholm SWEDEN *46#7O466OI99#