Planet Midgard: Archive
2006-02-28 - 2006-03-30
Markdown, XHTML, WYSIWYG and WiKis
Posted on 2006-03-03 13:08:08 GMT.
We have one case ongoing that I planned to include a WiKi, but then the "problem" occurred. Why is Wiki == Markdown (or other text-based formatting scheme). WiKi is a great invention, and as Wikipedia has shown, the content that "ordinary" people put there is mostly valid and correct. But then who are these "ordinary" people. I'm willing to bet that many contributors simply will not write stuff into WiKis becouse there is no WYSIWYG.
In my office there are 40 smart people, and just one of them knows what markdown is...am I that much smarter than the rest? NO. A WiKi should be a simple thing to contribute into, but this is a HUGE step fore those 39 people in my office that have no use of learning Markdown. I don't think that they want to learn stuff just to put text somewhere. They are experts on putting text to different places, just not with Markdown.
I know that Markdown syntax can be nicely formatted to XHTML, but my question then remains: why use Markdown at all when one could go to XHTML straight ahead. There are tons (well at least several) of good XHTML WYSIWYG editors out there to use, but is it the right way then? They are "wordish", so everyone should know how to use them. Well, one could argue with the fact that Markdown syntax can be produced everywhere, and it does not require javascript or anything. That's true, but if I'm aware of that and know that the people that will post their stuff into this WiKi have all the requirements for WYSIWYG editing, why am I still required to use Markdown? What I would like to see is in-place editing with ajax, where the text would automatically adjust to the sites CSS rules. The point here is to make it as simple as possible to contribute with texts. All talk of Markdowns and valid XHTML's is for the geeks that concentrate more on the format than the content.
In my office there are 40 smart people, and just one of them knows what markdown is...am I that much smarter than the rest? NO. A WiKi should be a simple thing to contribute into, but this is a HUGE step fore those 39 people in my office that have no use of learning Markdown. I don't think that they want to learn stuff just to put text somewhere. They are experts on putting text to different places, just not with Markdown.
I know that Markdown syntax can be nicely formatted to XHTML, but my question then remains: why use Markdown at all when one could go to XHTML straight ahead. There are tons (well at least several) of good XHTML WYSIWYG editors out there to use, but is it the right way then? They are "wordish", so everyone should know how to use them. Well, one could argue with the fact that Markdown syntax can be produced everywhere, and it does not require javascript or anything. That's true, but if I'm aware of that and know that the people that will post their stuff into this WiKi have all the requirements for WYSIWYG editing, why am I still required to use Markdown? What I would like to see is in-place editing with ajax, where the text would automatically adjust to the sites CSS rules. The point here is to make it as simple as possible to contribute with texts. All talk of Markdowns and valid XHTML's is for the geeks that concentrate more on the format than the content.