Markdown is terrible.

But what else is there?

As Joe Armstrong (co-creator of Erlang) put it:

"So if I hate markdown what do I like? Pencil and paper is best. Boots instantly."

Then he goes on to give his preferred method:

"For high quality text, I choose XML markup with my own custom DTD, then an Erlang program to transform this to XSL-FO using an Apache FOP backend."

Right. Sounds real easy Joe.

The correct answer: WYSIWYP. The P there is for "print'.

Markdown doesn't give you print. You can't get direct from screen to a printed text of any complexity with markdown. You just can't.

Markdown is supposed to enable writers to concentrate on the text — ie the content. What tosh. How are the asterisks in ***concentrate on the text*** not distracting?

Most text editors using markdown require a preview mode to display the rendered text. That’s a post-processing step by the editor. It doesn’t prevent the markup pollution in the first place. Apart from the inability to offer support for complex layout and styling, the markup clutter of even the most simple texts make it a non-starter. Which leaves WYSIWYP as still the preferable method for writers.

Speaking of preview, most markdown editors have their editing and preview modes back to front. While composing, you're left staring at the markup. To get a sense of what the text really looks like, that is to say its final effect, you have to switch to preview mode.

What should happen is this: while composing, you're left staring at the finished text, the text that a reader expects to see. To inspect the marked up text, which should be rare, you switch to source-code mode. Simple.

Some markdown editors do this rendering as you type the markup. Which begs the question, what's the point of the markup? After all, most markdown tagging is for the most basic html functionality. Is ctrl-b not quicker that typing stars both sides of your selection?

Some proponents of markdown make the point that markdown markup is less complicated than html markup. This point misses the point. When you write in a normal WYSIWYG editor, you don't write in html code. The editor does that. But with markdown editors, you have to use markdown codes. Otherwise the editor is screwed.

But above all else, it's the sheer visible ugliness that makes markdown so bad for writing. Writing depends on a write-read playback loop. Imagine taking down a book from your bookshelf and starting to read it. Do you see any markdown tags? No.

Not unless it's a book about markdown.

Or when you're contemplating on the screen a piece of prose, I mean deeply contemplating as a writer should, deciding whether you should change the order of the words, to delete or add something, to use italics on that key adjective, to add an em dash— is it an aid to your concentration to be looking at markdown tags? Do the tags aid your objectivity, your abilty to judge the text? No.

There most likely won't even be a tag for what you want to do.

And yet this is the absurd claim of markdown -- that it focuses on content, that it simplifies things, removes toolbar bloat, enables you to concentrate on the text.

Which is to say say ***concentrate on the text*** and try to visualise the bold italics.

You are meant to learn a soup of markup symbols to do pathetically simple stuff like this? Bold, italics, headings?

And for the complex stuff?

As William Burroughs would say: "No glot. C'lom Fliday."

And that's why writoro doesn't use markdown.