Markdown within block-level elements

Alan Hogan contact at alanhogan.com
Wed Sep 17 21:07:29 EDT 2014


On Sep 17, 2014, at 4:57 PM, Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.ca> wrote:

> I'll just point out that the markdown="1" trick should be credited to John Gruber.

Thanks. Sorry for getting that wrong.

> CommonMark interprets it "right" according to your intent, but the Markdown spec by John Gruber is very explicit about block-level HTML elements:

> I think the spec makes it clear that the content of `<header>` should not be parsed with the Markdown syntax. As for whether the spec is right or wrong in that choice, that is another debate entirely.


Indeed. To be clear, I am aware of Gruber’s rule (although I forget it from time-to-time as an author), and was hoping to provoke some discussion with the aim of, yes, rallying around the Common Mark decision here. 

I do not understand why the rule existed in the first place.

Apart from historical reasons, are there other good reasons to avoid Markdown processing within block-level elements?

And as far as those historical reasons go, I hope it’s abundantly clear how very silly it is for a hundred non-interoperable implementations to claim the motivation of “compatibility" to shun the change needed for consensus.

Break things. Bump the major version. Be part of an ecosystem that actually works.

Alan Hogan
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