[philoushka]

Given that it'll have StackOverflow, GitHub and Reddit behind it, that's definitely a large enough boost (or at least a large united front) to have this flavour be dominant. What does that Venn Diagram look like, I wonder: SO, GH, Reddit inside the whole online Markdown community.

Gruber seems to be a bit of a dick about it. Maybe he got surprised and it hit him harder than expected today. No surprise though, he's now about to be usurped. He sat on his hands for years. In the release today (and forever) they give him large amounts of due credit. The Talk Show crowd (I'm a listener) will grumble, and fanboys on Twitter will support him and jeer Atwood personally, but oh welp. There's one party actually advancing technology, the other resting on laurels.

He kind of mentioned being a benevolent dictator on the [podcast 88 discussion](https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527), but what important decisions has he actually made lately? It seems to me he just points back to his implemention perl script. Genuine question. He hasn't made a spec because (loosely) "why have a spec; just do whatever you want, take a look over here".

So it's a variant of his perl script. Great, that sounds exactly as he mused everyone should do. I can see how it rubs him the wrong way with "Standard Markdown".

Also: by doing this, the group will be forcing his hand. They've released it magnanimously, invited him to be a part of the process for years. He didn't respond in kind, labeling it "Atwood's crusade".

He may not like the name "Standard" enough to do something about it. He can choose to pursue legal options. I doubt he wants to spend any money on that. You've got to assume GH, SO, and Reddit went over the Markdown license on DaringFireball.

He can choose to be grumpy about it, but this is happening. Those 3 entities have massive persuasive force with their user bases; enough to become standard.

[genmon]

Then they should call it Big Site Markdown. Calling this a standard takes regular, varied, simple, use-case-specific, optimal Markdown away from the rest of us.

[Marazan]

But if you say your system uses "Markdown" then that's zero help for someone who wants to submit to you a complicated Markdown document for processing.

Ambiguity is not a feature it is a bug. It is not optimal.

[lmm]

> But if you say your system uses "Markdown" then that's zero help for someone who wants to submit to you a complicated Markdown document for processing.

This "Standard" makes things even worse. There are plenty of sites already on the internet that say they accept "Markdown", and that meant something: that it implements Gruber's formatting, and perhaps some extensions (and sites with extensions are normally clear about the fact that they're extensions, e.g. "Github-flavoured Markdown"). Now people will see a site that accepts "Markdown", expect it to support a feature from "Standard Markdown", and get angry when it doesn't.

[tomjen3]

If you want to submit a big document for parsing make it LaTeX or HTML.

Markdown is not for that and the exact reason to use it is that every site could customize it for their usage. Contrary to your assertions (which I see is backed by no argument) abiguity in markdown is a feature. Ambiguity in HTML was a bug.

[ojessen]

Funny, I had a blast writing a 30 page report with R Markdown, which is extended to hell and back (Math support, tables, graphics, whatnot).