W use markdown at all?

Are people actually using markdown instead of html markup. What makes it desirable? The entire internet uses markup.

 

Depends. For user-input (like user-uploaded files) and for use as a simple editor-enabled language, markdown is a wise choice. It doesn't contain any tags, or even allows for html or script tags to be rendered, instead it involves a specific list of possible inputs, which are parsed based on strict rules _by the underlying program_, not by the webserver. Hence, it's somewhat safer than allowing people to upload HTML-files with possible embedded scripts.

 

I use markdown all the time for writing blog posts. It makes it way quicker, I turn off the html mode or whatever so It wont let me use div's and classes and what not. Keeps my content clean and portable.

I used to write on html stuff and it used to take so long to escape code and wrap bits in <pre><code>escaped html</code></pre>. With markdown for example itll escape it for you and look like this:

```html
<div class="Blah blah blah'>
</div>
```

I'm not into compiling it on load though, I always just put two columns in my database (html/markdown)

 

To me markdown is hard to follow needlessly cryptic gibberish I flat out fail to see the appeal of. A situation made worse by the fact that for all intents and purposes it's "Semantics, what's that?!?" PRESENTATIONAL BULLSHIT!

Anyone who can't handle a little markup in the form of HTML, has NO ****ING EVER LOVING CHRISTMAS ON A CRACKER damned business writing content for sites in the first damned place -- at least not if you care about accessibility, semantics, and all the other things that creating content for websites is about. At BEST it's a crutch for inept morons in need of a quadruple helping of sierra tango foxtrot uniform, at WORST it's ignorant mouth-breathing halfwit bullshit by people who don't know enough about websites to be flapping their damned gums on the topic!

 

Well... bbcode, or markdown, is quite alright for content in forums, like this. Provides the ability to provide specific content-types, without having access to full tag-soup. And for such posts as these, there's no need for full markup, as long as you have basic abilities like bold, italics, insertion of links and such, perhaps also providing lists and other simple markup-items.
For proper content for websites, I don't see the point, if that's what you're doing, just do the markup (shouldn't be much more than <p>-tags either way, with maybe some added <img> and <ul> and such).