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0 pointspluma10y ago0 comments

He wrote the original Markdown. Barely anyone uses the original Markdown. They just use semi-compatible formats (e.g. Github-Flavored Markdown) using software that calls them "Markdown".

There is no spec for Markdown other than his buggy Perl implementation. He also didn't exactly appreciate the fact that other people tried to standardize "his" language.

I'm not even sure Markdown in general can rightfully be called an invention (in the same sense as JSON is not considered such by its "inventor"). It's just one of several plain-text formatting conventions that happened to become popular (though, again, not really his exact implementation).

In fact, because of the limited scope Gruber's original Markdown addressed and the redundancies he implemented (such as the different "bullets" for unordered lists) are biting implementers now that the format is used for other things than originally envisioned (by making extensions difficulty or unintuitive).

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drinchev10y ago

Sometimes the idea is worth everything.

Although you are right that people are getting more and more distant from the original markdown syntax. Google still suggest this as the first result on that specific keyword [1].

Something more. Categorising markdown as an invention may be a bit wrong, but it is a huge push to what now is becoming a standard ( at least in dev's world ) for many companies that have a user input feature.

I can't just say everything he did is good ( I also miss standartization ), but for sure I can't neglect what he did. I still remember how markdown-featured textarea inputs redirected to [1] when I clicked on the help button.

This alone makes his attribution great and that's why I prefer calling him "inventor of markdown", rather than paid blogger.

1. http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

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