Markdown and MultiMarkdown

I have been looking at Markdown and MultiMarkdown recently because I heard Merlin Mann saying that when he writes he always writes in Markdown. I like his way of thinking and so thought I should look into it more. Then Katie Floyd and David Sparks have done a Podcast about it recently, with the MacPower Users Podcast. Don’t worry it is not a podcast for power users really, not nerdy or in depth enough. You want Mac Geek Gab for that.

The NosillaCast mantra

Now the thing is that you have to have a problem to solve first as per the mantra of Allison on from the NosillaCast. Then I am wondering why on earth you might use Markdown and MultiMarkdown. Seems the inventor of it wanted it as a way to write in text format in a way that was a bit more readable by using things like asterisks, hashs, caret symbols , and so on to make it more readable yet still be in plain ASCI text. As well as making it more readable Markdown and MultiMarkdown would also export out to html format.So that then is the problem to be solved then.


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iMage Tools

What about WYSYWG instead of Markdown and MultiMarkdown

But it depends on what sort of thing you do in terms of writing and also where you do it. If you use Pages or another word processor the in rich text mode you get the readability in the formatting a la WYSIWYG. So why use Markdown and MultiMarkdown? Also if you are doing it to put out HTML then why not just use an app that will do that for you. I write in Mars Edit to make my web posts and I could do it completely WYSIWYG but I prefer to see the HTML. I don’t need many HTML tags in there and I have that covered by TextExpander and the built in snippets. I select the paragraph and hit CMD Option P and the tags are put in front and behind – Job done.

Markdown and MultiMarkdown work with MarsEdit and WordPress

For getting an image into it I drag and drop it into Marsedit and leave the app to work out the uploading and putting in the url to the image. Then if I want the image to be set to the left with the text flowing around. I place the curser in the right place and use TextExpander to put in the HTML code for me. The only other thing left is the Headers and again select the text, hit CMD Option – followed by a number for the level of the header and it is done.

So you can see I have more reasons not to use Markdown and MultiMarkdown than I do to use it. Starting to think that it is just something for the total nerdy geek man, or woman. Then I find a use for it. When I am writing on the iPad and I want HTML I think the simpler way to do it in Simple Note is Markdown. Or better still is to use Edito which is a text editor that gives an extra row of keys with all you need to put in the asterisk and hashs and so on. You get to save a lot of key presses and Edito also has a cheat sheet which is good for learners of Markdown.

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Nerdy Geek man

I must be a bit of a nerd because I find it difficult to understand how anyone can be intimidated by the basic html that most people who are not web developers will get to see. The other thing is that it is a bit weird is to be going the markdown route which is nerdy and has to be learned when all you have to do is to use a WYSYG editor of some sort and there are plenty of those about.

At the end of this discourse about Markdown and MultiMarkdown I am more of the opinion that its best use is when you want to use it on the iPad with Edito to produce html code really easily. That is when html code is what you are looking for as a final result. I do like to have a multimarkdown iPad app

One thought on “Markdown and MultiMarkdown

  1. DrMv says:

    It is not that html is that hard to use or learn, but that MultiMarkdown future-proofs and format proofs one’s work. It is also useful for people who write in Scrivener but want to work on their projects on the iPad. The only way to do footnotes on the iPad is by using MMD. Also, by using MMD I can create a single text document and then place it on the web via html conversion, send a copy to a friend as a PDF, and submit the article to a journal as a RTF. One simple text file (that is more humanly readable than html markup, i.e., less cluttered) converted into three different formats.

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