DidYaWipe

But since there are vanishingly few readers that render the markup, why have it at all?

Or, from the other angle, with Markdown being found in so many places, why aren't there popular viewers for it?

Thus my point. If everyone's answer is "just read the plain text," then why have the junk in it at all?

And I don't want an extra "preview" pane. That was the specific complaint. Nor do I want these docs in my IDE at all. I want all the available space in my IDE for code.

Again, why have this format all over the place when there are vanishingly few VIEWERS for it? Or vice versa?

"reading READMEs is such a common task that you specifically want it in your IDE"

Are you being intentionally obtuse? I said that's exactly what I DON'T want.

Except that they aren't shown as bullets, headers, or bold unless your viewer understands the Markdown codes that invoke those decorations. Which is what I'm decrying the lack of.

My "alternative" is to have DEDICATED, lightweight Markdown viewers. The major OSes have long come with a simple text-file viewer that can render RTF. Why not Markdown?

In the meantime, I'm mystified as to why the format is so rampant when there is so little support for it.

And read-me files are for, <gasp>, READING. Not writing. I have no need to EDIT any Markdown files... pretty much ever. Nor do I need to clutter my IDE with tabs devoted to reference material, much less an extra pane to "preview" it in its intended rendering.

Your pretension that most programming involves writing Markdown "source code" is absurd. I neither want nor need Markdown in any of my source-code editors, ever. Not once in decades of professional programming have I missed it.

And if I do need to create Markdown, I will want to do so in a simple WYSIWIG editor and save it as MD. Again... not in my IDE.

That's just playing dumb. It's only "plain text" in that it's non-binary. It contains formatting codes that aren't part of the informative content.

If everyone's just using a plain-text reader to view these files, then why clutter them up with formatting codes?

Thanks, but when I check something out, I'm working with it on my computer. I don't want to go back to Github every time I want to read something.

Wow, you got off easy.

That keyboard was such a POS that a Wall Street Journal writer did a feature story on it without correcting any of the mistakes the keyboard introduced. It was essentially illegible. Then the Web site had buttons that you could push to remove each kind of error and make it legible: https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-mac...

Thanks, but most of those are examples of exactly what I'm talking about: an editor with a Markdown "preview" function tacked on. I just want to double-click on the .md file and read it in a rendered form. Otherwise... what's the point?

And because of the lack of such readers, everyone just reads the plain text with a bunch of garbage in it. It's just gallingly dumb.

I agree, but it's worse than that: There aren't even widely-available SOFTWARE readers.

Thanks! But then why not just use plain text? Because of the lack of widely-available, lightweight Markdown readers, everyone just ends up reading the text with a bunch of codes in it. It's just... dumb.

What a dumb pain in the ass. Do you seriously check out a repo, run the read-me file through a Markdown-to-HTML converter, and then launch a browser to read the result?

Thanks, but that's a prime example of having to launch an editor and invoke a "preview" function (after installing a plug-in) to view this inexplicably ubiquitous format.

It's even dumber when you ponder: What is this a "preview" of? How the document will look in... a nonexistent viewer?

So you need to round-trip it through a Web site? Wow, convenient.

That afflicts anything you "type" on Jony Ive's "butterfly" shitboard.

Oh wait, maybe it's 30% of it is repeated...

Except of course that almost nobody makes a READER for Markdown. WTF? It's mystifying.

You find readme documents in Markdown in every open-source repo, but why? What are you supposed to read them with?

After much searching I finally ended up with Marked, on the Mac. A paid app. But that's about it for options. And no, I'm not talking about text editors that offer a "preview" pane that you can optionally invoke. I'm talking about a simple reader for Markdown that renders it, so you're not reading a shitty text file with a bunch of formatting codes in it. Why bother putting them in, if nothing parses and acts on them?

Then it's odd that they specifically point it out as not-yet supported.

Is what?

I thought this was interesting: "the implementation maintains a lightweight profile, rendering it particularly advantageous for embedded systems."

But then it goes on to say that "interactivity" is unsupported. Embedded UI would be the first thing I'd be interested in using this for; wouldn't that be hampered by the lack of support for interactivity? I don't know what SVG "interactivity" consists of.

Sadly, the Rive app is basically online-only. I was psyched to see it that wasn't yet more Web-based stuff, but after installing the app found you have to set up an "account" and be online all the time to use it.

What a disappointing PITA.

I had heard of Lottie, but also saw the post you're referring to; and it called out Lottie for being bloated and hideously inefficient.

I remember a family road trip from Chicago to South Carolina in our '77 Impala wagon, when my whole family was listening to a DePaul basketball game on WBBM Chicago. My dad was a big fan. It was late at night, and the game came down to the last shot in the last second or so. The station was barely coming in, so we pulled over and heard DePaul win on a buzzer-beater... then the station blinked out. It was perfect.

I always think about this when I see another story about AM's demise.

Mmm, I think you may have AM and FM reversed there. If I remember correctly, FM only goes 65 miles or so, but AM can go thousands of miles under the right conditions (at night, mostly).

Three days later, I finally get this.

poundIAmBright

Owls are actually hooting outside my door as I pull this up at 12:30 a.m.

"Following its 1980 release, Zork I became a bestseller from 1983 through 1985. By 1986, the game had sold 380,000 copies, with 680,000 sales for the trilogy overall, comprising one-third of Infocom's two million game sales"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom

Yes. I always bring this up when people in forums start talking about using these scumbag food-delivery operators.

Thanks for that. I've added that to my list.

It's been exhausting to respond to (reasonable) questions about non-anecdotal evidence... or outright scorn, with personally-scraped-up evidence that should have been public knowledge.

Everyone should have been armed with this information before making a risk/reward decision about the vaccine, especially as it became less effective and/or critical. Now I have a degraded life for a nearly-useless second booster.

The first specialist I went to, a top audiology lab in L.A. (the House Clinic), asked about COVID vaccine as the first diagnostic question. Their office noticed so many new patients coming in after just having the vaccine that they published a paper about it:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8443418/

Also, National Geographic (paywalled): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/covid-va...

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/can-the...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-sid...

And I have more, and I'm sure there are many more since. This one discusses the fact that even scientists have been reluctant to report this harm, for fear of being "canceled:" https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/tinnitus-rare-sid...

A specialist I saw at UCLA came right out and said "this is a true agent" (pretty sure that was the terminology he used) and that information on it has been actively suppressed.

Aside from suppression, there's a huge under-reporting problem here. I had to spend a lot of time seeking out specialists for this issue, time that I happened to have and the insurance and money to pursue it. That is not MOST people.

General practitioners and even first-level ENTs pretty much shrugged and suggested known-to-be-ineffective treatment like steroids. Do you think these guys reported my complaint as vaccine-related to some central database?

Of course I did, but again... I'm sure that puts me in a small minority. Also I had good hearing and immediately noticed the problem. In fact, I have diligently protected my hearing my whole life, wearing ear plugs even in loud pubs.

So I submit that this is a way bigger problem than the "stats" show... stats that (even so) DO indicate a problem.

I searched the article for the term, but found no explanation for its relevance.