[jandrew]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

I think that Markdown has made a very poor design decision regarding headings. I say that I'm doing it better, allowing headings of all levels to be easily grepped

Not sure what you mean here, markdown always supported atx style headings like:

# level one heading

## level two heading (and so on)

or am I missing your point in this grepping matter?

So, really, I think that all these strong "we do not need another format, why don't you stay with what already exists" replies are not valid criticism. If you are happy with Markdown, use it. Otherwise, either ignore what I'm doing, or have a look at it and criticise it for its shortcomings and faults, but not for the mere fact that I'm not using Markdown or a subset of it, and that I stand up and say in mixed company what exactly I do instead.

If your system existed in isolation that would be fine, but shouldn’t readers of this thread who might be unfamiliar with text based writing systems be able to read comments about how your system compares to existing solutions?

There is nothing particularly wrong with your solution per se, but the fact is that your dthtm.exe/dunyazad system is basically a very limited, but syntactically differing, version of a pandoc/markdown system. You have not offered any advantages that I can see, over just using a minimal subset of markdown.

On the other hand, what pandoc/markdown offers (beyond additional markup extensions) is:

• it has been widely used and tested for years
• it is actively maintained/developed
• there are many text editors providing markdown support (like syntax highlighting and preview modes) for win/mac/linux/ios/android platforms
• multiple format conversion including: html, pdf, epub2/3 and more

So, even if people just want to stick with headings, pararaphs, and italics, if they go with pandoc/markdown they have the above advantages. If their writing later requires footnotes, tables, citations, lists, code blocks, images, or such, they can add to their knowledge of pandoc/markdown as needed.

Certainly I get that you aren’t trying to be everything for everybody, and your system works for you and that is fine, and you are, of course, already invested in your system. I am not trying to attack your system for not being something else. But others might appreciate some context before investing.

cheers, andrew