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Agreed on Markdown's limited expressiveness.

I think the reason for programmers' attachment to Markdown isn't just about being able to operate on it in a terminal. It's about the general interoperability of plaintext.

Terminal editing is one example, but even IDEs and non-terminal text editors also use plaintext. There's also the fact that version control tools are designed for line-based plaintext. Markdown is especially often used for documentation that gets checked in alongside code, so this is an important consideration.

I would be very interested to hear thoughts on good alternatives to Markdown for technical documentation, even if not plaintext-based.




>general interoperability of plaintext.

1000% this. Markdown will be around forever. I'll be able to open an old file 20 years from now, _because_ it's just plain text. That's a feature, not a bug.

I'm so done with tying myself to rent seeking proprietary formats. For something as personal, important, and long lasting as notes / writings, I'll take the minor hit on absolute feature set.




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