Fwd: To start at the beginning

sorry, somehow the list ate my emails :/

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Begin forwarded message:

> From: Max Albrecht <1@178.is>
> Subject: Re: To start at the beginning
> Date: 20 November 2012 18:17:59 CET
> To: Markdown List <public-markdown@w3.org>
> 
> On 20 Nov 2012, at 17:28, Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 20 November 2012 15:11, Ryan Freebern <rfreebern@unionstmedia.com> wrote:
>>> Re: the scope, I know most discussion so far has centered on the markdown →
>>> HTML flow, but is there value in writing the spec using generic terms
>>> ("Level one header", "numbered list", etc.) rather than explicitly referring
>>> to HTML tags?
>> 
>> In my opinion? Yes, great value.
>> I agree HTML (or XHTML) may be a prime output. I still think there is
>> benefit in a more generic definition which is output format neutral.
> 
> To chime in, this is the exact reason I joined this group.
> I think that the real value of a MD spec would be to better define the 'meaning' of the syntax, which imho would go a long way for MD in terms of long-term usability and output to different formats. (The second important task for me would be finding a way to allow 'plugins' like GFM, MMD or pandoc's extensions to be specified as well, so that tool and service providers can support them.)
> 
> I am currently using MD in the context of long form text. There, a good print output is also desired and pandoc does a very good job at proving that, via LaTeX.
> 
> Although the spec by Gruber describes MD as a syntax for converting raw text with basic formatting into HTML, in my opinion it got so popular because it allows to convert that meaningful formatting into a meaningful ouput (and HTML just happens to be a very good and portable way to format that meaning).
> 
> It was a real eye-opener seeing pandoc spitting out a PDF for the first time…
> I've since dabbled with pandocs templating system and I am quite shure that it would be feasible to use it for writing the spec itself, for an example have a look at the [HTML5 template](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-templates/blob/master/default.html5).
> 
> 
> Also: Hello mailing list! :) If you are interested in my (work in progress) experiments with long-form MD check out <https://github.com/papermill/documentation>.
> 
> Max