The implementation problem for render on-the-fly

I am working on a WYSIWYG markdown editor. At first version, I add my owned markup syntax except markdown. However, after some feedbacks, I am aware of that may be not smart decision although my software supports conversion between markdown and my markup syntax. I am considering only support “standard” markdown in next version. Here just put my feeling on markdown.

Mainly reason I made my owned markup because markdown is hard to implements, especially, rendering on-the-fly for WYSIWYG feature. For example, *bold and italic*. There is not very straightforward implementation on this ambiguous syntax. Even for batch conversion, markdown is also not best design. Same example, in my markup, *~bold and italic~* using different markup characters. I can not list very down detail here but as developer, just feel markdown causes lots extra work.

Anyway, it is not big deal on implementation. Let developer do the dirty work. But why I also feel markdown somewhere is not for most human being but for hackers? Like double character markup. *bold*, ~~cross~~, that is extra 4 typing. Heading, ######, a little bit challenge to counting how many “#”. “_” and “*” doing the same thing, why? It just let me remember the story of QWERTY keyboard layout, it is rather to speed up typing by preventing jams. CommonMark is good project, but just like patching, not new changing.

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Markdown is definitely intended for writers rather than developers. As such the different syntax variations makes it a good choice for writers who may not remember a specific syntax (so long as their intention is within the supported group of variations). Often the writer will be able to “muddle through” and guess the appropriate Markdown syntax because it is close to how the intention is expressed in plain text.

The point of CommonMark is to clear up the ambiguities in the spec. This should help you as a developer.

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