[Spooky23]

Markdown is like the new WordPerfect for some people, who want expressive written paths to format text.

Like with WordPerfect, there are people who get great utility (attorneys in WP, developers with Markdown), but 80-95% of people don’t get anything out of it.

It’s also one of those things where the constraints are an advantage. Markdown is great for internet facing text content, while many aspects of the mainstream wysiwyg editors are really descended from solutions for placing text on paper.

[darkteflon]

Former lawyer here. That most commercial contract work is done in Word is a source of major frustration and wasted time for many lawyers. Others are simply unaware that there are any authoring/editing paradigms that allow one to separate the drudgery of getting document formatting just-so, from the actual value-additive work.

Unfortunately there’s no realistic solution to the lock-in, so wrestling with broken paragraph formatting, mismatched text sizes, auto-numbering errors, etc at 2am before a client deadline remains the norm. One of the most frustrating parts of the job.

[EasyMark]

I never have those issues, but I'm the only one editing my stuff. I use styles religiously when I use Word for professional documents. It takes a little more time and effort but pays out over the long haul.

[pasc1878]

But very few people do that.

I was on a project and complained heavily that we were not using styles,. The complaints got my manager to state that another person would do all the formatting. Of course the other person left befor the end and I had to do all the formatting.

[Spooky23]

That’s why. If you use styles and embrace sanity in general, it’s fine. But word is like Perl, there’s more than one way to do it.

Paste additions to the middle of a numbered list from legacy documents that break the number sequence and use custom fonts altar create weird problems? Sure.

Allow sociopaths to format text using a series of invisible text boxes? Sure.

Decide to randomly lose the names of editors and contributors? Sure.

[kayodelycaon]

Do you use the comment and change tracking features of Word?

I write stories and everyone uses Word documents for editing.

[carlosjobim]

What's the problem with Word documents if you open them in Word?

[bombcar]

Those 80% sometimes DO get something out of it - when the resident nerd can fix their broken document because it’s Markdown or WordPerfect.

Just because I can’t fix my car doesn’t mean I want an unfixable car.

[Spooky23]

Agreed, but that’s the tension.

There’s no free lunch. On the flip, that user wants the complex features of the platform, and exposing them to a markup language takes elegant markdown and turns it into html or ooxml.

[Telemakhos]

Attorneys and architects loved Word Perfect because it did line numbers better than any other software. I'm really surprised that MS didn't pick up on that and improve Word's line numbering: it's a vital feature for a number of professions.

[dctoedt]

> Attorneys and architects loved Word Perfect because it did line numbers better than any other software.

Lawyer here: I loved WordPerfect (for DOS) because of Reveal Codes and its easy keystroke macros, which let me write an Emacs keyboard emulator for it. (Yes, I eventually did one for Microsoft Word for Windows, which I use to this day.)

[Tallain]

That sounds really cool. Have you ever shared it?

[dctoedt]

I posted the DOS version on CompuServe (!) probably 30 or 35 years ago. I don't think I ever posted the Word for Windows version. I switched to a MacBook a dozen years ago; I think I remapped some of its keys to emulate Emacs. (But in recent years I've used mostly Emacs itself and org-mode, because these days I'm mostly a law professor and use Word mainly in the occasional client contract-negotiation project.)

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10383691

[packetlost]

idk, a lot of non-devs use chat programs that use (a subset of) Markdown for rich text even if they don't know what that is.

[soulofmischief]

Its the new BBCode.

[packetlost]

It's a lot better than BBCode tbh

[Apocryphon]

You can underline in BBCode.

[mmh0000]

You can have colors in BBCode.

[tough]

You can embed html inside markdown

[glookler]

Everyone gets something out of markdown, even the 80-95% of document writers that don't get what they want out of it for writing don't have to read as much slop from the others in their group.