Opinion Piece: Markup -- Between The Authorities and Let's Get On With It

[@TiddlyTweeter]

This is almost a manifesto (I may change my mind tomorrow). But I hope it will ring some bells.

1 - SCEPTICISM

I'm sceptical WikiText & other current simple markup and Markdown systems are anything special. Their utility lays in that they aren't: MEANING, they are foundations but not the final building.

That does NOT mean that I think SHORTHAND is not relevant. It IS. Very. But is should be a DODDLE (very easy) of improvisation, not a labour of slavery to the past.

Making YOUR OWN Shorthand Markup SYSTEM should be simple in TW too.

It isn't.

It could be.

IMO USER shorthand markup is the way ahead that addresses what MD and WikiText lack and which TiddlyWiki can provide EASILY.

When Gruber introduced Markdown (MD) it was a very elegant solution to formatting EMAIL. Gruber & Swartz reasoned that markup should allow plain texts to remain readable even when marked-up. Excellent aim.

As long as your write nothing outside their syntax it works well still.

And it covers about 20% of actual writing forms. Its excellent but VERY limited. NOW.

A problem, not noted much about Wiki markup systems generally, is the FINITE number of special universal characters available that make visually semantic sense.

This is very clear with markers like "*" "#" and "_". They had semantic resonance before the web as markers. If you look at the simpler markup systems you'll quickly see they hit a limit where they can't find any new characters that have the semantic clarity of those Founding Glyphs.

Basically All Decent Characters have been eaten already. So "simple markup" (READABLE) became "more complex markup" (LESS READABLE) anyway.

That symbolic paucity of available characters on the keyboard has itself limited growth of simple markup IMO to its detriment. It has not kept up with webby expression well.

A long time has passed. The net is way ahead of the original intent of those systems now. And MD's LIMITED scope is now as much about EATING IT, DIGESTING it INTO other more EXPANSIVE formats. Its a BIT of something else. It is NOT a Ding an sich to do simpler markup in real usage. Its a mixture. A morph. a mash-up. A blend. A MORE THAN it.

In other words MD is a limited formatting system with good utility still for limited objectives. Its boring. Clean(ish). And easily supported. And NEEDS extensions it itself does not support to be credit worthy.

Maybe more later.

Josiah

[HansWobbe]

Thanks for this good refresher that I agree with.  As for the severly limited number of characters available via a keyboard ...

Personally, I have been using TW's wonderful tag in conjuction with the incredible number of UTF-8 characters to map my own personal meaning to things.  ( e.g. The symbols originating in the Chinese Telegraph code include distinct single characters for each Hour, dayOfMonth and Month creating a very "dense" Tags timestamp that can be used with Tobi's cycleTags macro to efficiently navigate the Time dimension. See @ https://unicode-table.com/en/search/?q=telegraph+code )  It's not a precisely deterministic approach, but it sure is effective in the vast majority of my useCases.

Given the existing ability to easy change tag values that Felix provided a few years ago, I find it efficient to use strings I can key and then map them to single Symbols and Glyphs that I prefer.

Cheers,
Hans

[TonyM]

Josiah,

I understand this is important to you and I support your endeavour, however it is less important to me. One reason is what I have already done the following for myself using CSS and searching.

For example

in My StyleSheet I define Question .q and Answer .a (and more of course)

.q { color: orange;
}

.a { color: blue;
}

Then there is a multitude of places I can add .q or .a to indicate a question or answer, you can do more by introducing font awesome, in the css to introduce letters and symbols.

My Favourite is

;.q a question

:.a and answer

I then have a Q&A tiddler containing

!!Tiddlers containing one or more questions
<<list-links filter:"[!is[system]search[.q ]] -[[Q&A]] -[[MyStylesheet]]">>

!!Tiddlers containing one or more answers
<<list-links filter:"[!is[system]search[.a ]] -[[Q&A]] -[[MyStylesheet]]">>

And a Footer in view template which lists all Q&As when found in a tiddler

Note:The count is not working correctly

<$list filter="[all[current]search[.q ]limit[1]]" variable=null>
@@.q Tiddler contains (
<$list filter="[all[current]search[.q ]]" variable=null>
<$count filter="[all[current]search[.q ]]"></$count>+
</$list>) Question(s) @@
</$list> <$list filter="[all[current]search[.a ]limit[1]]" variable=null>
@@.a Tiddler contains (
<$list filter="[all[current]search[.a ]]" variable=null>
<$count filter="[all[current]search[.a ]]"></$count>+
</$list>) Answer(s)@@
</$list> 

I suppose one point is in this case "." is the delimiter when used in certain places, from there I have many characters or even full words I can use to define almost anything which alters appearance once rendered and can be searched for.

I do not feel constrained in anyway, and eventually I will create an Edit Toolbar option to make things into Questions, Answers or Q&A Pairs.

and @@.q also works @@ inside text

To me this is Making YOUR OWN Shorthand Markup SYSTEM [and it is] simple in TW too.

I do not feel my options have all being eaten.

Can you give a few simple yet specific examples you would like available to you?

Regards

Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM

Right. You reflect my point.  

Whilst HansWobbe plays with using unique unusual markers you are using a SHORTHAND.

That to gain better traction on markup you use BESPOKE smart INNOVATIONS on markup.

This is not different than what I am saying. Its IMPLICITLY instancing it.

I think what I am trying to get at is to EXPLICITLY extend this into COMMON KNOWLEDGE &, maybe, easier usage.

Best wishes
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

I wrote on Twitter ...

I'd like to see @TiddlyWiki actively embrace other #Wiki #Markup systems since its already really able to support them. Migrants lives should be made as easy as possible. Too few people know WHAT #TiddlyWiki can do easily.

- J.