Re: What's in this project for implementers?

Looks great!  One comment in-line.  On a personal note, I appreciate your
proper use of the Oxford Comma.  I am a comma nazi.


On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Ryan Freebern
<rfreebern@unionstmedia.com>wrote:

> Below is my first draft of a message to implementers. Please let me know
> if I'm missing any vital information or being unclear about anything.
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan
>
> -- message follows --
>
> Greetings,
> I don't need to tell you what a great tool Markdown is. As a simple and
> intuitive syntax that looks good as plain text and can be converted to
> sensible, attractive output in other formats, it's an amazing
> low-barrier-to-entry way to help people create attractive documents. It has
> very shallow learning curve


It has *A* very shallow learning curve


> and, once you're familiar with the basics, mostly just stays out of your
> way and lets you get things done.
>
> However, it's undeniable that it has its problems. Some of its rules,
> especially when dealing with edge cases, aren't totally clear. Maybe it has
> too many options; maybe it doesn't have enough. In any case, it's a fact
> that while the basic syntax is pretty good, there are some rough edges that
> need to be ironed out. That's why there are so many different markdown
> flavors in the wild, and so many extensions to John Gruber's original
> syntax. While this does mean that by choosing the appropriate
> implementation you can get exactly the functionality you're looking for, it
> also means that learning how to use that implementation is more difficult,
> and once you start using it you may not be able to move your documents to
> another without a lot of clean-up work.
>
> I'm writing to you on behalf of the recently-formed W3C Markdown Community
> Group (http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/) because you've been
> identified as the lead of a software project that consumes markdown syntax,
> and we recognize that you undoubtedly have a lot of valuable insight about
> markdown.
>
> Our goal, briefly, is to specify an unambiguous markdown syntax in order
> to allow easier implementation testing, simplify the learning process in
> order to expand markdown's usage, and increase portability of documents
> between implementations. To accomplish this, we want to make sure we're
> taking into account as many different thoughts, ideas, and concerns as
> possible. As an implementer, we particularly value your insight into the
> problems you've encountered and feedback you've received over the course of
> building your implementation, and we want to know how you think a markdown
> specification would benefit you, your users, and the web community as a
> whole.
>
> If you'd like to help out, please consider joining the group by creating a
> w3.org account and signing up at
> http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/join/. Alternatively, if you'd
> prefer to just provide one-time feedback, just send me your thoughts and
> I'll pass them on to the group. Again, we want to make sure we're working
> towards a beneficial solution to actual problems you've encountered, so
> anything you can provide to guide us in that direction is very welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan Freebern
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 3:20 PM, marbux <marbux@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Aristotle Pagaltzis identified the key players we need to involve in
>> this post. <
>> http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2012-November/002772.html
>> >.
>> You might consider recycling some of the text I wrote to introduce
>> this effort on that mailing list. See
>> <
>> http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2012-November/002773.html
>> >.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
>


-- 
Shane P. McCarron
Managing Director, Applied Testing and Technology, Inc.