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Comments on HTML and Markdown aren't right for me. What other text markup types are around?

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HTML and Markdown aren't right for me. What other text markup types are around?

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Hello, power users! I am trying to make a personal wiki/zettelkasten/card index sorta thing to organise my fictional world as well as the rest of my daily life.

I chose Joplin, which is software I'm quite happy with! It works well, I like the split-screen with the preview on one side. I like the way it continuously backs up. I like that it's all offline and on my computer.

However, there's one issue. Markdown. I am not a big fan of markdown on Discord, but I thought maybe I could just cope with it, the benefits of organisation would outweigh the drawbacks.

However, I really just don't like markdown's reappropriation of different symbols for syntax (the asterix key for bold and italics as is seen here, for one, but Joplin also uses [tab] to make unformatted text which means I cannot make little indents for subsections or whatever)

So, what alternatives to Markdown exist?

So, I don't want HTML or anything else that does the separating of paragraphs and whatever with tags. Writing DOCTYPE html and <body> and <p> everywhere is just unappealing for me

HOWEVER, I like HTML's use of <b> <i> for bold and italics. I'd love a markup format that used this.

I guess what I am asking for is a plaintext (.txt) file with HTML formatting tags added on top of it, rather than a plaintext (.md) file with MarkDown added on top, or a HTML file.

What markup is closest to my requirements, if any?

The requirements for a markup, summarised in image form. Compared with HTML and MarkDown.

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6 comment threads

Syntax or editor? (1 comment)
Style suggestions (2 comments)
Post Feedback (4 comments)
What is Zoplin? Can you link us to it? I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find an editor by... (4 comments)
HTML in Markdown (2 comments)
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Style suggestions
matthewsnyder‭ wrote over 1 year ago

There are two aspects to your question: The background/context for what issues you've had with Markdown and so on, and the requirements you have for what you want instead. IMO the latter is more important, although the first part does add color and helps interpret the requirements where they may be vague. The requirements are also more widely applicable to other users.

Currently your post intertwines background and requirements. It also quite long - that's fair though, I get that you need some space to properly explain the matter. But because it is long and intertwined, it is hard to read. I don't think you should shorten it because that would remove crucial details. I recommend that you rewrite to have two sections: One were you concisely spell out requirements, and a second where you explain the background.

matthewsnyder‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Btw, I say this because there are two ways to answer your question: By taking everything you said at face value and just mechanically picking the closest thing (requirements), or by trying to read between the lines and figure out what it is you actually want (the context). When most people ask questions, there is a lot of divergence between those two, so usually the answerer must consider both to come up with a good response.