"M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb / cesmail.net> writes:

> Philip Hallstrom wrote:
>>>>> As part of their "best Ajax" article:
>>>>>
>>>>>  http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/192203368?pgno=7
>>>>>
>>>>>  Welcome to the 1980s. Want to make text bold? You'll
>>>>>  have to put the characters * and * around it. For big
>>>>>  text, first type in h1. All that's missing is a DOS
>>>>>  prompt and a floppy disk. No thanks -- been there,
>>>>>  done that.
>>>>
>>>> The browser address bar is the DOS prompt.  Welcome the the 21st C.
>>>> Besides, WYSIWYG is so '90s.
>>>>
>>>> I much prefer Writely to Writeboard, but this reviewer so misses the
>>>> point it's laughable.
>>>>
>>>> (I think the last good issue of Dr. Dobbs was the 30th anniversary one.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Well now ... I agree with Dr. Dobbs in this case. Give me WYSIWYG or
>>> give me HTML, but don't make me learn a *third* language to mark up text!
>> 
>> Didn't you mean to say "don't make me learn a <b>third</b> language to
>> mark up text" ?
>> 
>> :-)
>> 
>> Sorry... I just couldn't help myself :-)
>> 
>> 
> Uh ... yeah. Dang VT100 muscle memory. :)
>
> Which reminds me ... I need to install a DOS emulator to run some Pascal
> code.

But that's just the point of Markdown and Textile! They are trying to
be as much as possible a language that you already know.  And you
wrote markup that is valid in both of them not only without having to
think about it, but without even realizing it.

I'm hardly a big advocate of either.  My first experience was writing
a comment on some blog, thinking 'some special markup thingy? piffle.'
and just typing away plain text.  Then it took my unthinking plain
text and did the right stuff to it.  I just think that's kind of neat.

I think the DDJ author was trying to be cute and entertaining.  To
restart the ages-old WYSIWYG debate as if it just occurred to him is
weird.

Steve