World: r4wp

JPG support in R3 would be amazing, even though I know it would bloat 
the size of the executable by a significant amount.  Maybe it could 
be available as a plug-in so if you don't need JPG support, you don't 
have to sacrifice the space.

I'm speaking of being able to write JPGs.  I see now that the discussion 
was about reading JPGs.

This was supposed to be supported through media types.

I've got a question about using MakeDoc/MakeDoc Pro vs Markdown/MultiMarkdown. 
Are there significant advantages with MakeDoc that outweigh going 
with Markdown which seems to be the defacto standard for lightweight 
markup? I guess when MakeDoc first came out it was pretty unique, 
but if you were to need this kind of tool today wouldn't it make 
sense to use something with wider adoption?

No.  Better is better.

That's not much of an answer, Scot. I was hoping that someone who 
is familiar with these markups can say something specific to help 
me decide if I'll ever have to make the choice. I could go through 
each and compare the features side by side, but maybe someone has 
already done that (haven't found any comparisons).

Unless you already are invested in tools one way or the other, I'd 
go with Markdown these days.

On a pure feature basis, I think make-doc-pro somewhat surpasses 
plain Markdown. I fear you'll have to decide on your own if you need 
something MDP adds.

Andreas:  Sorry. I wasn't really commenting as much on Make-Doc-Pro 
as the impending realization that we are going to see a ton of forks 
branching off.  Make-Doc and Make-Doc-Pro have been associated in 
my mind with the "official" RT over the years. 


Hopefully the R3 team will be able to keep this thing focused.  Still 
not sure who those people are.  As long as Mark Down is pure Rebol, 
I suppose I don't have much preference.  Rebol has always taken the 
high road, so if MDP is better, I think we should stick with it. 
 Widespread adoption has never been as important as top quality better 
design.


If we continue to adopt whatever is widespread we'll end up losing 
everything that is better.  Amiga OS, Be OS, QNX Nutrino, etc.  All 
far better OS designs than Unix and Windows NT.  What do we end up 
with?  Unix and NT and of course the dreaded DOM (don't try to convince 
me that a flavor of Linux is anything more than a Unix OS).


So better is better.  If MDP is better, then we should adopt it, 
not because it is widespread, but because it is better.

The thing is that MD markup is supported by quite some Wiki engines 
etc.

MDP struggles with markdown syntax. We talked about rewriting it 
with a cleaner implementation.

I write my code in Rebol, because the concepts behind Rebol are the 
most advanced and human centered I've found (I have written code 
in 30 languages and now that I've seen the source I code I can tell 
you it is by far the most elegant thing I've ever seen.

Henrik: So MDP was intended to parse Markdown syntax to a certain 
degree?

Robert:  Do it.  Make MDP cleaner.  Then we make a Wiki that uses 
the cleaner MDP.  Or fix MarkDown so it is better than MDP.

Scot, any markup could be parsed/processed by Rebol. So my question 
here was about the syntax/features.

AdrianS: I'm not sure of the origins, but it has some problems with 
nested styles, using them inside () and use of styles with no spaces.

You can't inline URLs either.

I would like to see an MDP that was built on top of markdown, which 
then utilizes headlines, TOC and glossary.

AdrianS:  That is a better question.  What have we learned about 
the approach taken by MDP versus MarkDown.  I am personally much 
more inline with the approach taken by MDP.  It hasn't been attended 
to in quite some time.

The MDP code is quite a bit a mess. So, perhaps it's better to reuse 
the name as mark-down-pro

Now we can attend to the things that were elegantly conceived but 
never really developed.  MDP is one example.  I like the exclusivist 
nature of Rebol.  I like the fact that I can do my architecture from 
back to front without ever leaving Rebol.

Well, if the Markdown syntax is too limited, there's also MultiMarkdown 
which has the benefit of being a superset of Markdown.

Yes, Make Doc Pro really doesn't scale well.

So what would it take to make a Make Doc that can scale?

I think you keep mixing up the implementation of processing any of 
these markups being done in Rebol (which you prefer, and I don't 
question this) with the actual markup.

Sorry, that was addressed at you, Scot.

Scot, it has to be rewritten. The code is a mess. So, we could start 
with a pure markdown parser and build on top of that.

AdrianS:  Not mixing at all.  I am done with taking something like 
MarkDown which is limited in syntax and "adding features" to make 
it do more things.  That's how the beast we call the DOM came to 
be.  An awful thing.  You can't talk about the syntax without talking 
about the design of the parser.  They can't be separated.

That's the whole point of dialects.  MDP is a dialect of Rebol.  
It needs attention.

I'm not sure what markdown has to do with the DOM?

Hmm, I think you are in fact mixing up implementation with syntax. 
Are you saying that MakeDoc markup is not something that can/should 
be able to be processed by non Rebol tools?

Whew!  Not being clear.  The DOM is the result of taking a simple 
Hypertext engine and trying to turn it into a application architecture. 
 Everyone adopted it because it was widespread, not because it was 
good at appications.

Uhhh...

MDP is a dialect of Rebol.  It takes advantage of what Rebol does 
well.  Is Markdown a dialect of Rebol.  Is the syntax optimized to 
play well with rebol?  That is my question.  If not then we need 
somethign that plays well with REBOL.  We can alway output MarkDown 
if somebody really wants it.

Scot, MDP is string parsed and markdown is string parsed as well. 
MDP actually works by first converting line by line into another 
dialect, which then is parsed to HTML.

MDP is string parsed
 - and this part is actually a big mess.

I've spent a lot of time with MDP, written a whole distributed application 
with pages based upon the principles of MDP.  The biggest mess in 
MDP is the need to make HTML pages, which is a fossil and pretty 
awful, but widespread.  People need HTML so we output that.  People 
may want PDF, or RTF or Postscript or MarkDown, or whatever.  Those 
parts will always be a mess because the formats of all those outputs 
are a mess.

I've also spent quite a lot of time with MDP as well building now 
around 2 megabytes of manuals with it, and I spent some time adding 
new features to it. I wanted to add a glossary feature, but it's 
quite strained with what we can do now. The HTML part is not so bad. 
The line parser is much worse, both because we are running out of 
space for sensible inline rules (which all are one-char and markdown 
doesn't have this limitation), and the code itself is not very well 
organized.

I would gladly toss out the MDP parser for a clean markdown parser.

wouldn't Carl's original makedoc.r be convertible with not too much 
effort?

I think it has fewer inline rules.

Gabriele also did a variation for Qtask. Not sure about compatibility, 
but it would be more modern, and likely a very clean implementation.

Gabriele's MD3 is fairly awesome, imo. Very easy to build MakeDoc 
'dialects'.

Has MDP ever been really associated with RT? I always thought it 
ways Robert's creation. Whereas MakeDoc and MakeDoc2 where Carl's 
stuff.

No, I don't believe it was.

It is a superset though, iirc -- any MD(2) document can be processed 
by MDP.

we should probably try to make it clear for newcomers when we mean 
MakeDoc(2) vs Markdown, which some people might think MD refers to

Scot, on generation: Gabriele's FSM emitters (particularly for HTML) 
are the most elegant solution to this I've seen. I use it often.

Adrian, I'm not certain, but I believe the settled extension (and 
I suppose shorthand) for MakeDoc is .rmd (Rebol MakeDoc).

I just meant in here - someone dropping in/by might get confused 
when there are references to MD