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by infogulch 1459 days ago
I really don't like overloading ```X as a way to render the output of running the code, because now you have no way to display a block of raw mermaid or math code which is the whole point of ``` in the first place. I would be much happier if they introduced a syntax variation to enable this feature more generally instead of overloading the purpose of backticks, something like ```!X (```!math or ```!mermaid) for "run the contents as X and render the output in the document".
4 comments
thangalin 1459 days ago
KeenWrite[1] uses a "diagram-" prefix for text-based diagrams[2]. What's needed is a standards body for Markdown[3]. GitHub should not be imposing de facto standards.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[2]: https://kroki.io/

[3]: https://talk.commonmark.org/

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rustyminnow 1459 days ago
I was confused about your comment at first - I was sure it was already a feature where you could use ```X to render the contents with a language. E.g. you could go ```java or ```javascript and get syntax highlighting for that language.

What you're saying is since ```mermaid now renders a mermaid diagram, there isn't a way to display a block of raw mermaid code with syntax highlighting.

That's a very valid point.

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whatshisface 1459 days ago
They could add a ```mermaid-source tag.
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infogulch 1459 days ago
I agree my comment was difficult to understand, so I edited it to hopefully make it better. Thank you!
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ratmice 1459 days ago
The simple fix for this is that you should use "```math render" or some such, the language is specified as the first word with everything after the space up to the newline currently ignored...
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infogulch 1458 days ago
> everything after the space up to the newline currently ignored

Oh I didn't know that, that's perfect!

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nschloe 1458 days ago
The big advantage of using code blocks is that is guarantees that their sanitizer doesn't mess with the contents. This is a pretty big plus.

Also, you can of course still have mermaid code blocks; just don't put `mermaid` after the three backticks. The code block won't have any syntax highlighting, but in the case of `math`, this wouldn't make sense anyway.

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