Show HN: Cleaner Markdown lang and static site generator (Shrimple) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Cleaner Markdown lang and static site generator (Shrimple)

qount25.dev

3 pointsusrbinenv7 comments

> a better, cleaner Markdown alternative

Better and cleaner compared to what? What does this improve on? What pain points does it solve?

Markdown is unreadable as a source. This solves the problem of looking good and clean as a text document and not having to remember many rules (certainly less than Markdown) to write a valid Shrimple markup that compiles nicely to HTML. Another thing is a static site generator that's very nice for writing documentation sites -- it takes care of generating not just the html pages tree, but also inserts menu and navigation links in them correctly.

The nice thing about MD is that it's a spec, separate from impls. If I were to use this, I'd want to install a node.js lib that renders it to HTML and has a plugin API for features you didn't think of but that I need and know how to implement myself. So I wouldn't tout the built-in-ssg as a feature, more of an ad hoc spec like perl markdown originally was.

Also I commented with some feedback in another part of this post.

Yeah, I get it. Technically, nothing prevents me from writing a formal spec (rules are rather simple too and most are listed in the README), but I just don't expect any kind of adoption, it was really just a tool for myself to ease the pain of writing docs. Thank you for the feedback.

Oh, I see. It's an alternative to Markdown itself.

Interesting. Ambitious, but interesting. MD does have some serious warts.

It would be nice if you could provide a shorter summary of the differences, mainly the pain points it solves and how it solves it.

A few notes so far:

* Markdown has [named link references] that clean up inline links a lot. I didn't know about them until recently.

* How do you specify the language for code blocks so they can be syntax highlighted? That seems like a missing feature, and one I won't be able to work without.

* I agree that header delims in Markdown seem literally backwards. ### seems like a more primary header than ## or #, and === more than --- when under the text.

* I also agree that h4-6 are useless, but I would need h3 at least.

This project is interesting, and I'd like to see it gain traction, at least in discussions. I started a similar experimental language in 90s.dev for similar reasons.

[named link references]: https://github.com/sdegutis/90s.dev/compare/6d83a384e5aec81c...

Also, markdown-it (and probably other MD engines) has number-list-normalization. I think it's practically standard atp.

> ### seems like a more primary header

I really dislike this for headers, but also, this marker is only valid inside code blocks and is optional.

> How do you specify the language for code blocks so they can be syntax highlighted?

See above, with ###Go and then add Prism.js into your document.

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