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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?

Ladislav, couldn't you convert the docs to markdown into a file called 
readme.md so that they are visible by default?

Reagarding Saphirion's documentation - maybe it's silly question, 
but could you try to change extension from .mdp to .md and see what's 
the difference on GitHub? I'm sure that it would look a little bit 
better directly in the browser as at least syntex for headers is 
almost similar in MarkDown as in MakeDocPro.

Oldes, I have a dream about an MDP2 that will start with Markdown 
compatibility. Actually, no, I have a spec document, but am not sure 
I should publish it yet.

Henrik, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't markdown just a text formatting 
system as opposed to a document formatting system like make-doc ?

Yes, but it seems to make sense to base body text on this and build 
the rest around it. MDP has a particular way to format body text, 
but we've found that it's hard to extend. I would like an MDP2 that 
much better is capable of outputting right down from a single paragraph 
of markdown to a full multi-page document.

He's saying that using %.md for your existing %.mdp documents would 
be enough to use the existing markdown colouriser

Unfortunately not enough to change extension. MDP is using === and 
--- for headers, where MarkDown is using ### http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/the-future-of-markdown.html

I found MarkDown a good thought, like mdp, and ther obviously has 
been put some clever thinkwork into it, but six hashes for a h6 tag? 
And the alternative underline with "====" and or "----" does not 
convince me what happens if you do not match the length of the header? 
It compensates? so why not 3 or four like in mdp?

if others might maky their stuff and claim it beind de-facto standard, 
we can as well ... not sure if markdown is more popular than what 
github is using for their .md, but we should either adhere, or make 
converters and go our own way, or even better - introduce some clever 
layer, which will allow to recognise their format and render it properly, 
while allowing .mdp to be more powerful

Pekr, Markdown _is_ what Github is using for .md files.

Pekr, I have several markdown docs now in the document repository, 
and they display quite nicely on github

AdrianS: Github Pages uses Markdown format, they have no support 
for makedoc.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I took the liberty of taking AdrianS's posting, reformatted it to 
Markdown (only minimal changes necessary), added IRC, reordered things 
slightly, and updated two few counts.

Here's a rendering of this updated Markdown document to HTML:
http://bolka.at/2012/rebol3/pages/community-radar.html

Here's the Markdown source of the updated document:
http://bolka.at/2012/rebol3/pages/community-radar.mkd

Thanks for the additions, Andreas. It was my intent to have this 
in Markdown or something like it to have it be easily posted to any 
web site that could accept such content.

Javascript port of Markdown -> http://www.attacklab.net/showdown-gui.html