• Unique notation for decorating text created in 2004
  • Created to decorate text in a more convenient way than writing HTML directly
  • Focus on text decoration within a single page has consumed symbols extravagantly (_italic_, **bold**, etc.)
  • Therefore, it is not possible to simply express page-to-page links
  • Many people make the mistake of thinking that there is one unified format with the name “Markdown” [there are 9 variants as of 2016 https://www.iana.org/assignments/markdown-variants/markdown- variants.xhtml]

Comparison with bracketing in [Scrapbox markdown:

link
[link](http://example.com)
image
![](Image_icon.png)

scrapbox:

link
[link]
  Links in the project do not require URLs, just bracket the title
[link http://example.com]
  For external links, add the URL there.
[Image_icon.png]
  If the external link is to an image, it will be displayed as an image.

As for images, simply paste from the clipboard and they will be uploaded automatically.

  • Drag and drop is also acceptable.

In terms of interoperability with other services, the new bracketing is at a disadvantage to the old Markdown, but this is not surprising: when Markdown was born, it was at a disadvantage to HTML, and when JSON was born, it was at a disadvantage to XML. JSON was born, it was at a disadvantage to XML.

It is futile to discuss the merits of the notation itself, because those who say that Markdown is good for interoperability must have thought that Markdown with low interoperability was a bad idea when it was created. It is a laggard who does not want to adopt it himself until many others have adopted it.

Note that the term bracketing was introduced at Scrapbox Drinkup 20180810.

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/Markdown using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.