14 min
The pros and cons of markdown (podcast, part 2) The Content Strategy Experts - Scriptorium
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- Business
In episode 98 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Dr. Carlos Evia of Virginia Tech continue their discussion about the pros and cons of markdown.
“If you want to make a website and you need to write the text in a fast way that does not involve adding a lot of the brackets that are in HTML syntax, I think that’s the main use for markdown.”
–Dr. Carlos Evia
Related links:
* The pros and cons of markdown (podcast, part 1)
* Does markdown fit into your content strategy?
* Lightweight DITA podcast: part 1 with guests Carlos Evia and Michael Priestley
* Lightweight DITA podcast: part 2 with guests Carlos Evia and Michael Priestley
Twitter handles:
* @sarahokeefe
* @carlosevia
Transcript:
Sarah O’Keefe: Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize and distribute content in an efficient way. My name is Sarah O’Keefe and I’m your host today. In this episode, we continue our discussion about the pros and cons of markdown with Dr. Carlos Evia. This is part two of a two-part podcast. So when we talk about markdown, because I think that probably most of the people on this podcast in general are more familiar with DITA. When you talk about markdown, what is the sort of use case for markdown, the clearest possible place where you say “oh, this is a case where you definitely want to use markdown.” What are those factors?
Dr. Carlos Evia: You need to make content that is going to be published mainly to the web and here I say mainly because markdown now, that part of processing the syntax that used to be in the beginning, “let’s process with this tiny, tiny tool that will only convert to HTML or XHTML,” now there are many other tools that can actually process and transform markdown to other things to create that multichannel publishing that we also do in DITA.
CE: So, I think the main use case is if you need to have something that is going to be published or presented in a website, and you do not want to write HTML. It’s a shorthand, just like when we were back in junior high, the cool thing was that you will take a course in typewriting, so you can be working with computers. This is back in the Fred Flintstone days.
CE: But before you could touch the keyboard, you had to take a course on shorthand, and shorthand was several syntaxes. I think there are two amazing texts for shorthand. You had to learn how to do it with a pencil, actually a special pencil. And there were different notations that you will do. And then, once you dominated those things and you could take dictation super fast, you can go and transcribe it using the keyboard.
CE: So I think that’s kind of the equivalent of markdown. If you want to make a website and you need to write the text for your website in a fast way that does not involve you adding a lot of the brackets that are in HTML syntax, I think that’s the main use for markdown. Write it following this very simple text-based syntax.
CE: And then there will be a tool that will transform it, and mainly to a website. But like I said, there are some things,
In episode 98 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Dr. Carlos Evia of Virginia Tech continue their discussion about the pros and cons of markdown.
“If you want to make a website and you need to write the text in a fast way that does not involve adding a lot of the brackets that are in HTML syntax, I think that’s the main use for markdown.”
–Dr. Carlos Evia
Related links:
* The pros and cons of markdown (podcast, part 1)
* Does markdown fit into your content strategy?
* Lightweight DITA podcast: part 1 with guests Carlos Evia and Michael Priestley
* Lightweight DITA podcast: part 2 with guests Carlos Evia and Michael Priestley
Twitter handles:
* @sarahokeefe
* @carlosevia
Transcript:
Sarah O’Keefe: Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize and distribute content in an efficient way. My name is Sarah O’Keefe and I’m your host today. In this episode, we continue our discussion about the pros and cons of markdown with Dr. Carlos Evia. This is part two of a two-part podcast. So when we talk about markdown, because I think that probably most of the people on this podcast in general are more familiar with DITA. When you talk about markdown, what is the sort of use case for markdown, the clearest possible place where you say “oh, this is a case where you definitely want to use markdown.” What are those factors?
Dr. Carlos Evia: You need to make content that is going to be published mainly to the web and here I say mainly because markdown now, that part of processing the syntax that used to be in the beginning, “let’s process with this tiny, tiny tool that will only convert to HTML or XHTML,” now there are many other tools that can actually process and transform markdown to other things to create that multichannel publishing that we also do in DITA.
CE: So, I think the main use case is if you need to have something that is going to be published or presented in a website, and you do not want to write HTML. It’s a shorthand, just like when we were back in junior high, the cool thing was that you will take a course in typewriting, so you can be working with computers. This is back in the Fred Flintstone days.
CE: But before you could touch the keyboard, you had to take a course on shorthand, and shorthand was several syntaxes. I think there are two amazing texts for shorthand. You had to learn how to do it with a pencil, actually a special pencil. And there were different notations that you will do. And then, once you dominated those things and you could take dictation super fast, you can go and transcribe it using the keyboard.
CE: So I think that’s kind of the equivalent of markdown. If you want to make a website and you need to write the text for your website in a fast way that does not involve you adding a lot of the brackets that are in HTML syntax, I think that’s the main use for markdown. Write it following this very simple text-based syntax.
CE: And then there will be a tool that will transform it, and mainly to a website. But like I said, there are some things,
14 min