[throwaway150]

> You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.

That is well known and I am sure the author is aware of it. The problem they are describing is not whether HTML is technically allowed inside Markdown. It's that when you are writing Markdown, you are writing Markdown, not HTML, and that comes with some problems.

> It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't.

In theory, yes. In practice, using Markdown becomes much less appealing once you start dropping raw HTML all over the place. The whole point of choosing Markdown is that you do not want to spend your time typing <p>, <a>, <li> and the rest. You want to write in Markdown, with only occasional HTML when absolutely necessary.

That is exactly where the author's complaints become relevant. If the solution to Markdown's limitations is routinely switching to HTML, then the argument becomes circular. If you are expected to write HTML to address the author's complaints, why bother with Markdown at all? If the answer is just "write HTML", then you may as well skip Markdown in the first place.

[euroderf]

> why bother with Markdown at all?

Maybe it's an 80-20 thang ? Your page is mostly MD that's easy on the eyes, but with "shelling out" for semantics like section or aside ?

[Terretta]

> The whole point of choosing Markdown is that you do not want to spend your time typing <p>, <a>, <li> and the rest. You want to write in Markdown, with only occasional HTML when absolutely necessary.

Why is that a problem?

> If the solution to Markdown's limitations is routinely switching to HTML, then...

Why would you do that, instead of only switching if you had to?

Why would the alternative be "just HTML" and write all the nonsense you said one doesn't have to?

[vorpalhex]

Most markdown engines allow short tags to stand in for html, so for frequent features you can just use a short tag.

Alternatively you can extend markdown. I wrote a simple text based game engine that was markdown based but I needed some arbitrary additions appropriate for a game.. so I just added a few elements.

[hysan]

The author addresses this too. Once you start down this path, you go down the road of non-standardization which means losing portability, etc. I don’t see how this is a point against the author?

[bccdee]

None of the author's other suggestions are portable either. So what if pandoc markdown is only understood by pandoc's tooling? DocBook is only understood by DocBook tooling. The difference is that pandoc markdown is already 95% similar to every other flavour of markdown, so migrating to a new system (if necessary) would be relatively simple. Also, the difference is that XML is a pain to write and I'm not sure semantic tags matter all that much.

[hysan]

Maybe portable isn’t the right word. I read portable as meaning the format’s semantics are consistent across platforms. The way I read the author’s complaint was that once you start tacking on extensions to markdown, you run into the problem of seeing if other markdown platforms being able to support your variant of markdown. Hence the part about CommonMark vs GitHub-Flavored Markdown vs etc. Having actually run into this before when working on CMSes in the past, I get why the author sees this as a problem. I don’t think everyone will agree with the authors viewpoint, but I just happened to think that this thread is completely missing the point that the author is trying to make.

[bccdee]

> I read portable as meaning the format’s semantics are consistent across platforms.

By that definition, a format which is only implemented on one platform is 100% consistent. I agree Markdown is uniquely fragmented, but it's also uniquely widespread.

Markdown is an extensible core for writing platform-specific languages. I think comparing markdown in general to something like DocBook is comparing apples to oranges. Instead compare (e.g.) Pandoc's specific markdown variant to DocBook.

[hysan]

> I think comparing markdown in general to something like DocBook is comparing apples to oranges.

Hmm let me rephrase the issue I have with the comments in this thread. If your position is that markdown doesn’t belong in the same category as the others, then yeah, I agree. But I also think that’s basically rejecting the premise of the article and there isn’t a discussion to be had. If you disagree with the core premise, then it doesn’t matter what is said, there’s no discussion to be had.

However, the original parent comment is stating that the author’s assertion is false because you can extend markdown. I don’t see how that logic doesn’t run into the semantics and “portability” problems that the author is writing about.

[fastasucan]

>why bother with Markdown at all?

Because a little html is less html than "everything in html".