Is there any reason to avoid switching exclusively to Markdown tiddlers?

#1

I’ve been using vanilla WikiText up until now, but I’m thinking of switching to Markdown (via the official Markdown plugin) simply because I find the syntax nicer for basic text formatting.

As far as I can tell, if I delete the contents of $:/config/markdown/renderWikiTextPragma everything not recognised as Markdown gets interpreted as WikiText anyway, so the more powerful WikiText features will still be available from a Markdown tiddler.

I’m just wondering if there are any disadvantages to switching to Markdown that I haven’t anticipated?

#2

Have things changed? It used to be that you could only use wikitext features like wikilinks and transclusions if they could fit on a single line. If you had a list widget across two or more lines, then it wouldn’t work.

Hmm. Testing … I notice that mutliple line wikitext does work, but might give weird results. This code:

<$list filter="[tag[Dutch]]">
Title : <<currentTiddler>><br/>
</$list>

Renders the results as plain text. But this code:

<$list filter="[tag[Dutch]]">
**Title** : <<currentTiddler>><br/>
</$list>

Renders the results as links, ignores “title”, and breaks (shows un-nested List widget) the output. But it looks like you could put the wikitext in a standard tiddler and then transclude it into markdown and it works as expected. So there’s a work-around.

Outside of that, I’ve wondered the same thing. For better or worse, Markdown seems to be here to stay. Everybody seems to have adopted it (even though they immediately want to tinker with it to compensate for it’s flaws and missing pieces).

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#3

Thanks @Mark_S, I did not think about that case but you are right, Markdown nested within WikiText doesn’t work, unless stored in a separate tiddler and transcluded. Of course one workaround is just to switch back to pure WikiText for any nested formatting, but this adds more unnecessary complexity than I am comfortable with.

Personally I care much less about how widespread it is, and more just that it is (IMO) much neater than TiddlyWiki’s markup. Obviously this is pretty subjective though.

#4

I am not a markdown user, “When in roam do as the romans”, is my axiom.

  • This is not true if you use Typed blocks, see below

For completeness if you add a markdown tiddler it sets the type to text/markdown, which is a mime type and it is applied to the whole body. As with other types you can display a block of another mime type within tiddlers.

WikiText can include blocks of text that are rendered with an explicit ContentType:

Example code, one type within another

**Markdown heading**

!!Wikitext heading

$$$text/markdown
**Markdown heading**

!!Wikitext heading
$$$

$$$text/vnd.tiddlywiki
**Markdown heading**

!!Wikitext heading
$$$

It would be fairly strait forward to make an editor toolbar button to wrap a selection in a named mime type.

However there is a gap;

The Typed Blocks in WikiText works in wikitext tiddlers, not in markdown tiddlers. So you can currently only include markdown blocks in wikitext tiddlers not the other way around.

  • perhaps this should be raised as an improvement for the markdown plugin and if the $$$ delimiter does not work in Markdow, come up with one that can work in both markdown and wikitext.
  • A little research may expose how to do this for inline as well as blocks in your tiddlers.

Also if it helps I have started calling wiki text + widgets and macros, “TiddlyWiki Script”, in someways you want your Markdown + widgets and macros

Let me know if this improves the usability @Sii

TiddlyWIki Syntax highlighting
#5

Wikitext is arguably better and sensible to read in the raw text than Markdown.

Italics in WT: //This is in Italics//
Italics in MD: *This is Italics*

Which one looks more like “Italic” ?

In MD one set of bullets means itialics, but two sets mean bold. Really? Is that intuitive?

Which means that asterisks can’t be used for bullet points, which is their logical usage. Instead hyphens are used. Which are more understandable in the raw text?

* Items in
* Wikitext

- Items in 
- Markdown

MD uses “#” for headers, which then forces you to provide your own numbering for numbered lists. Which in turn makes it impossible to just put a numbered something at the start of a line. WT uses “#” for numbers, allowing auto-numbering.

Markdown tables … requiring you to put in a divider line … don’t get me started.

I feel like markdown was created by someone who came back from a pizza and beer lunch, was bored, and threw something together.

But MD has caught on, and now you can find it on Reddit, Discord, Discourse, Github. So it’s the standard markup language.

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#6

I knew there were reasons I did not care for it.

Why follow a standard if it is weaker?, if the sheer volume demands MD support, we just integrate it with a plugin, ability to include blocks.

  • Oh we have already,
  • It only has the gap I highlighted above.
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#7

In Dec. 2017 I did ask: “What if?” at GoogleGroups.

What if …

we would make commonmark [1] markdown [2] a 100% subset [3] of the TiddlyWiki syntax?

It may contain some interesting views about the possibilities and “hickups”

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