I love the "very much like HTML" syntax the Monastery uses for creation of nodes, and I'd never want to eliminate it. However, as the proud owner of a WordPress site, I have fallen in love with Markdown.
I propose that Markdown be considered for inclusion on PerlMonks. It is already Perl, so cleaning it up and putting it into whatever code pre-processes nodes already shouldn't be a huge effort. Also, since it is designed to ignore things that look like HTML, I strongly suspect that implementing it wouldn't break anything about our current node-interpolation stuff.
However, it would have some pretty nice gains. Namely, allowing people to concentrate more on writing the post than formatting (I hate having to remember those paragraph tags), and having posts by newbies be formatted much more DWIMmishly (because they neglect paragraph tags a lot). Since it allows a hybrid of HTML (and would probably just as easily allow existing Monastery syntax) and its own syntax, users could easily choose to use Markdown syntax where it saves time (like using *this* for emphasis), and the usual Monastery markup where it makes more sense (like code or spoiler tags) in the same node
It seems my request to join the pmdevils has been ignored, or I'd be submitting a patch instead of a request, but things being what they are: what say my fellow Monasterians to Markdown?
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