Implemented Markdown (new try)

[Cthulhux]

As I presume xF 2.0 will have a couple of bigger changes, I'm taking this chance to suggest Markdown support again. Markdown seems to be the declared successor of BBCode, being supported by more than just forums (most blogs, websites like GitHub and Stack Overflow, ...). This would be a giant step forward.

Thanks for reading.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I have been thinking of suggesting something like this for a while now but I don't know how I feel about it.

Is Markdown really all that great? I've been told for the longest time now that it is far easier to BBCode and I do see newer sites use it, but at the same time BBCode is universal at least with the older parts of the internet.

@Chris D, @Mike,

How do you feel about Markdown and do you think it has a place in the forum world?(Not asking if its coming to xF)

 

[Biker]

Meh. Considering there is no standard for it, it's far too early to even contemplate adopting something of this nature. Not to mention, switching this on your users is going to create a huge uproar as they'll have to learn something completely different from bbcode.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

Meh. Considering there is no standard for it, it's far too early to even contemplate adopting something of this nature. Not to mention, switching this on your users is going to create a huge uproar as they'll have to learn something completely different from bbcode.

Some other pieces of software use a combination of both. Markdown for the easier stuff like unordered/ordered lists while bbcode does more complex stuff.

 

[Cthulhux]

Meh. Considering there is no standard for it

Here's the Markdown standard, made by Markdown's inventor; here's the Markdown Extra standard. Both come with a reference implementation.

You're welcome.

 

[Biker]

That's HIS standard. Not an industry wide standard. Nice try.

 

[Cthulhux]

That's the Markdown standard, as BBcode is the BBcode standard (given that various board systems support different tags too).

 

[Mike]

I don't think a spec is explicitly relevant, but saying it's THE standard isn't really correct; the original spec was ambiguous. See the whole saga with Markdown at Discourse: http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-flavored-markdown/

It actually led to a different spec, CommonMark: http://commonmark.org/

 

[AndyB]

An explanation of Markdown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Standardization

 

[ibnesayeed]

Is Markdown really all that great? I've been told for the longest time now that it is far easier to BBCode and I do see newer sites use it, but at the same time BBCode is universal at least with the older parts of the internet.

BBCode is very annoying and difficult to work with in bi-directional input or RTL languages (as expressed before). Markdown or CommonMark on the other hand is a lot easier to work with in such cases. In our Urdu forum, we often deal with issues where manual modification of posts without RTE is almost impossible, even for advanced people, without messing things up. Following is a very small example which illustrates how attributes of one BBCode tag mix into the other and brackets are all misaligned in RTL mode.


Here is the actual text that is shown in the above snapshot (read snapshot from right to left):

[QUOTE="ابن سعید, post: 1868295, member: 1673"][I][B][COLOR=#0059b3]اردو محفل[/COLOR][/B][/I][COLOR=#b30059] میں [/COLOR][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=#ff0000][U][B]خوش آمدید[/B][/U][/COLOR][/FONT] [USER=595]فاتح[/USER]![/QUOTE]

 

[ibnesayeed]

Update: Added an RTL screenshot in the post above.

 

[Kirby]

Some users in one of our forums asked for markdown support a few months ago - I added it and nobody used it afterwards
So while markdown is nice and easier to use than BBCode, I don't think this is something that would be used often.

In fact most posts don't use any formatting at all exepct for URLs and linebreaks.

 

[ibnesayeed]

Some users in one of our forums asked for markdown support a few months ago - I added it and nobody used it afterwards
So while markdown is nice and easier to use than BBCode, I don't think this is something that would be used often.

In fact most posts don't use any formatting at all exepct for URLs and linebreaks.

I don't disagree with you. Most of the time all we need is paragraphs of text. In the presence of a decent RTE, many non-technical people wouldn't even know about BBcode. Ideally, it should all be hidden in the RTE (which, due to some technical challenges, may not be easy to do). Even here at XF, where presumably many technical people are around, how often those BBCodes are used that do not have an editor button (such as "PLAIN"). However, there are cases where Markdown like stuff can be very helpful, such as inline code, regular multi-line code, lists, and tables etc. In cases where RTE is not an option, almost every MD equivalent that exists (excluding those that are present in BBCode, but not in MD) is easier and cleaner to enter manually.

 

[TrevC]

Some users in one of our forums asked for markdown support a few months ago - I added it and nobody used it afterwards
So while markdown is nice and easier to use than BBCode, I don't think this is something that would be used often.

In fact most posts don't use any formatting at all exepct for URLs and linebreaks.

Do you have this running on XF2?

 

[Kirby]

No, this was done for a forum using WoltLab 4 .
But I don't think it would be difficult to implement, in fact there already seems to be at least one Add-on that offers Markdown (though not for XF 2):
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-markdown-parser.5114/

 

[TrevC]

Well, I suppose we can still be added to the list of people willing to pay for it. I'd happily dish out cash for a working and reliable implementation of github or other modern flavored markdown. People definitely prefer it to bbCode (which just feels like a weird legacy forum thing at this point). Markdown is easier and more natural for people to remember.

 

[Kirby]

If I can find enough motivation tomorrow I'll port that WBB 4 stuff to XF 2.

 

[TrevC]

Our experience is that members have either no experience with any markup languages, or they have familiarity with Markdown from Reddit, Github, etc. Nobody uses or has heard of bbCode, at least not in the under 30 crowd

http://commonmark.org/ and github-flavoured markup seem like enough of a standard to me. Works well.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Reddit

Reddit desktop has a WYSIWYG editor now

 

[TrevC]

Reddit desktop has a WYSIWYG editor now

You can still type markdown directly in to it though, I assume.