[gopher] Hello Gopher Project

[Driedfruit]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2014 06:37:52 -0800 (PST)
Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:

> > 
> > I've got the idea (but I may be wrong here) that there were
> > several, not exactly compatible, versions of markdown.
> 

As someone relatively invested in Markdown, I thought I'd chime in.

It sadly is true, that all those markdown parsers out there are
semi-incompatible with each other. And the parser authors DO
communicate and DO try to work out a middle-ground, it's just that it
has grown into multiple directions too fast.

Not counting "addons" (i.e. markup for forms, tables, etc), even the
basic principle of what makes a paragraph differs. Some times it's
double new line, sometimes single new line, etc.

(And FYI, those "versions" are commonly known as "flavors" in Markdown
parlance, i.e. "github-flavored markdown", "stack overflow-flavored
markdown", etc)

> I'm not sure of their intercompatibility, but this was one of the
> things I was concerned about. I don't really want to be maintaining a
> Markdown parser on top of a gopher client.
> 
> I like the Markdown concept, mind you, and if someone's system can
> handle Markdown (such as through an addon), I think it's a reasonable
> thing to support as long as it degrades gracefully on other systems.
> I'm not sure I'd like to burn an item type on it, however, especially
> since it displays just fine as 0 (perhaps clients supporting it can
> offer a toggle).
> 

For me, the best part of Markdown is that it *IS* plain text. For that
reason, I really dislike the usage of ".md" extension in some places,
IMHO, a good old ".txt" (or NO EXTENSION) makes more sense.

I would agree that Markdown and gopher were meant for each other (i.e.
serve MD to gopherhole, serve MD->parsed_as_html to http blog), but,
yeah, new type is definitly not needed.

-- 
driedfruit