Why does mod portal use Markdown?

[thereaverofdarkness]

Markdown is the simplest, laziest, most useless and most intrusive text formatting function that exists. It was made by a lazy person for lazy people. Not lazy people have built better formatting systems to be used by lazy people, you know with buttons for the superior HTML functions, for people who can't be bothered to type brackets, or perhaps can't be bothered to learn brackets. Most forums simply use the HTML brackets system and most end users have no trouble using that system. It doesn't mutate your text when you're trying to use asterisks to, say, show asterisks in the text or some other rare unheard of use case for asterisks. It's apparently elementary enough for average forum users. I don't know why Factorio modders need something at a lower level. Markdown is for YouTube commenters. Please give us HTML.

[Optera]

+1 Signed
I can't be bothered to learn the dumb syntax of markdown to format a mod page. If you gave me html that'd be a different story.

[Bilka]

How about wikitext, that's html and a different version of markdown combined, that will totally make everything better ;)

[thereaverofdarkness]

+1 Signed
I can't be bothered to learn the dumb syntax of markdown to format a mod page. If you gave me html that'd be a different story.

Here's a Markdown tutorial:

*text* = italic
**text** = bold
***text*** = italic
****text**** = bold
??? = *text*
* text * = [*] text *

* text = [*] text

_text_ = italic!?
_*text*_ = bold italic

#text = biggest text
##text = big text
###text = pretty big text
####text = medium text
#####text = small text

??? = underline
??? = [s]strikeout[/s]

How about wikitext, that's html and a different version of markdown combined, that will totally make everything better

*I* feel like HTML is better without Markdown.

[Optera]

Here's a Markdown tutorial:

Those are what you find at every corner.
I was refering to more "advanced" formating like tables with defined text spacing, in line thumbnails or thumbnails as bullet points.

[betrok]

I was refering to more "advanced" formating like tables with defined text spacing, in line thumbnails or thumbnails as bullet points.

Ok, obviously, we need LaTeX for a brief description of the mod. %)

[thereaverofdarkness]

Here's a Markdown tutorial:

I was refering to more "advanced" formating like tables with defined text spacing, in line thumbnails or thumbnails as bullet points.

As I understand it, outside of a few specific cases, Markdown does more to eliminate your ability to do advanced styling than it does to facilitate it. There are fonts that give you even spacing, and you can use plain text documents in those fonts to make tables and charts as easily as learning Markdown, and more easily than using Markdown.

[kirazy]

There are web-based editors to build Markdown-style documents in. It's fairly straightforward.

The issue arises when you use these and then paste the result into the description, and whatever Factorio is using isn't actually Markdown because maybe 25% of the Markdown features work as advertised.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Markdown should be abandoned to die. End of story. It never had any use and it never will.