1. People have a hard time remembering the order and which characters to use. The most common error I see is (text)[href]. Spaces in between the [text] and (href) is also common.
2. ( and ) are URL code points: they can exist in URLs without being percent-encoded. This means that you can’t just paste or emit regularly serialised URLs, you also need to change any ( to %28 and ) to %29.
To fix it, you start out by using <> to delimit the URL instead of (). This fixes the serialised URL problem (< and > aren’t URL code points), and it was the traditional delimition of URLs too, where delimition was required. You could say that () was common too, but I’d argue that was just normal linguistic parenthesis rather than URL delimition. Markdown even uses <> as URL delimition already, but only for links with no custom text (called “automatic links” in Gruber’s definition, “autolinks” in CommonMark): “https://example.com” is just text, “<https://example.com>” makes it a link.
As for the way of adding a title attribute to a link, that shows that the parentheses aren’t even actually delimiting the URL. And then you get into the mess that’s […] and […][…], in addition to […](…). It’s an ill-considered mess.
1. Seems unavoidable because there is no natural order for these two elements. It happens that html puts the link first but any time I’m writing I would put the link second.
2. I guess that’s fair. I think parentheses in urls are a bigger issue than parentheses in markdown though. Parentheses in urls often end up percent encoded whether they need to be or not.
> You could say that () was common too, but I’d argue that was just normal linguistic parenthesis rather than URL delimition.
Right. I would say that markdown is inspired more by linguistic styles than markup styles.
You certainly could use <>, but I actually don’t think that matches the way people usually write urls in non-markup formatting. I find it interesting that Gruber chose to use that for autolinks, though.
I do appreciate you clarifying. I see what you mean, at least with respect to all the issues around #2. The more I use markdown, though, the more I come up appreciate this format, specifically because it’s so readable as text. I think it’s a reasonable trade off.
Anything that doesn't force you to remember arbitrary ordering - square brackets first? Or parentheses? It's the textual equivalent of plugging in usb upside down.
An alternative would be to simply use square brackets for both clauses of the link.
The problem with this is that if you want to render this “pretty”, there’s no way to know whether the link should be “my website” or “website” or even the whole sentence. So you add brackets to clarify.
Someone (maybe on this site) suggested to think of the bottom bars of the square brackets around the linked text to kind of frame the underline. Somehow worked really well for me, haven’t forgotten the syntax since.
chrismorgan|1 month ago
1. People have a hard time remembering the order and which characters to use. The most common error I see is (text)[href]. Spaces in between the [text] and (href) is also common.
2. ( and ) are URL code points: they can exist in URLs without being percent-encoded. This means that you can’t just paste or emit regularly serialised URLs, you also need to change any ( to %28 and ) to %29.
To fix it, you start out by using <> to delimit the URL instead of (). This fixes the serialised URL problem (< and > aren’t URL code points), and it was the traditional delimition of URLs too, where delimition was required. You could say that () was common too, but I’d argue that was just normal linguistic parenthesis rather than URL delimition. Markdown even uses <> as URL delimition already, but only for links with no custom text (called “automatic links” in Gruber’s definition, “autolinks” in CommonMark): “https://example.com” is just text, “<https://example.com>” makes it a link.
As for the way of adding a title attribute to a link, that shows that the parentheses aren’t even actually delimiting the URL. And then you get into the mess that’s […] and […][…], in addition to […](…). It’s an ill-considered mess.
dpark|1 month ago
2. I guess that’s fair. I think parentheses in urls are a bigger issue than parentheses in markdown though. Parentheses in urls often end up percent encoded whether they need to be or not.
> You could say that () was common too, but I’d argue that was just normal linguistic parenthesis rather than URL delimition.
Right. I would say that markdown is inspired more by linguistic styles than markup styles.
You certainly could use <>, but I actually don’t think that matches the way people usually write urls in non-markup formatting. I find it interesting that Gruber chose to use that for autolinks, though.
I do appreciate you clarifying. I see what you mean, at least with respect to all the issues around #2. The more I use markdown, though, the more I come up appreciate this format, specifically because it’s so readable as text. I think it’s a reasonable trade off.
__mharrison__|1 month ago
Otherwise, it is a relatively smooth writing experience. Much better than word, asciidoc, or latex.
evnp|1 month ago
An alternative would be to simply use square brackets for both clauses of the link.
dpark|1 month ago
> The details can be found at my website (https://example.com).
The problem with this is that if you want to render this “pretty”, there’s no way to know whether the link should be “my website” or “website” or even the whole sentence. So you add brackets to clarify.
> The details can be found at [my website](https://example.com).
There are certainly alternatives but I don’t think any of them are more natural, or memorable for that matter.
simonkagedal|1 month ago
setopt|1 month ago
For comparison, Org-mode uses [[LINK][DESCRIPTION]] instead of [DESCRIPTION](LINK).