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0 pointscaptn3m05mo ago0 comments

I’ve been asking for browser-native markdown support for years now. A clean web is not that far, if browsers support more than just HTML.

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xigoi5mo ago

Markdown is not standardized, so every browser would render the page differently and you’d get the same problems as with pre-standard HTML.

captn3m0OP5mo ago

Browsers can take standards position on CommonMark extensions and decide on a baseline that goes into the W3C spec? It will just converge on the lowest common denominator and that’s good enough for the vast majority of content reading usecases.

lelanthran5mo ago

> I’ve been asking for browser-native markdown support for years now. A clean web is not that far, if browsers support more than just HTML.

You can always do the markdown -> DOM conversion on the client. Sure, there's a bit of latency there, but it means easier deployment (no build step involving pandoc or similar).

Browser-native markdown support would be better though; you'd get ability to do proper contenteditable divs with bold, italic, etc done via markdown

captn3m0OP5mo ago

To get broad support from the server side, you’ll need to showcase high browser support. We need Wordpress and Wikipedia and Ghost to support this, and that won’t happen without native browser support.

lelanthran5mo ago

> We need Wordpress and Wikipedia and Ghost to support this, and that won’t happen without native browser support.

It can. Unlikely but possible. A good first step would be to have a well-written web component to be used like this: `<markdown>...</markdown>`, with no support at all for a build-step. The .js file implementing this should be included directly in the `<head>`.

If that gets traction (unlikely, but possible) then the standards would sooner or later introduce a tag native to the browser that does the same thing.

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xigoi5mo ago

Markdown is not standardized, so every browser would render the page differently and you’d get the same problems as with pre-standard HTML.

captn3m0OP5mo ago

lelanthran5mo ago

> I’ve been asking for browser-native markdown support for years now. A clean web is not that far, if browsers support more than just HTML.

You can always do the markdown -> DOM conversion on the client. Sure, there's a bit of latency there, but it means easier deployment (no build step involving pandoc or similar).

Browser-native markdown support would be better though; you'd get ability to do proper contenteditable divs with bold, italic, etc done via markdown

captn3m0OP5mo ago

lelanthran5mo ago

> We need Wordpress and Wikipedia and Ghost to support this, and that won’t happen without native browser support.

If that gets traction (unlikely, but possible) then the standards would sooner or later introduce a tag native to the browser that does the same thing.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse