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by carapace 1118 days ago
Markdown is, uh, not so good, it just won a popularity cintest. E.g. Creole is much better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_(markup)
4 comments

Why is Creole better?

To me they look much the same.

Except I prefer Markdown for the looks and how widespread it is.

I was a Wikipedia contributor for many years before Markdown came along, and I think Markdown has a better flavor for hyperlinks. "[link text](url)", "[link text][footnote] + [footnote]: url" are just great. I write like this even without any expectation of rendering it as anything but plaintext.

Years ago I read a well-reasoned comparison of a handful of markup languages and the author made a strong case for Creole (which I had never heard of before or since. I use markdown just like everybody else. ;)

Unfortunately, I can't remember the arguments and I've never been able to find that article again.

So I can't tell you why it's better. But try it and see what you think?

I already evaluated Creole and prefer Markdown. I also prefer reStructured Text over Creole.

Searching for comparative reviews, I’ve found five, neither of which recommended Creole for any particular reason.

My main point of review is how to make local links:

When I use Markdown, it’s either in my Obsidian notes which actually have a wiki-style [[link]] syntax (not standard for Markdown), or it’s in a git repository where local links means a link to a relative file path.

The latter is more portable, whereas wiki-style namespaces assume one homogenous knowledge base, which makes distributing documents more difficult.

Oh I like it. It looks unambiguous, and it feels just as mnemonic as Markdown. I can't believe I haven't seen it before..
We will never have good things. Just good enough. As it has enormous traction, and you can explain it to anybody in 5 minutes, it is good enough.
This is the first time I've heard of Creole (I've been authoring in Markdown since 2004).
Doesn't look like better in anything ?

No markup syntax is straight up worse