You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.[0] I am not aware of any Markdown tooling that does not support this.

So, no, Markdown is not holding me back. It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't.

[0]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html

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throwaway150 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.

That is well known and I am sure the author is aware of it. The problem they are describing is not whether HTML is technically allowed inside Markdown. It's that when you are writing Markdown, you are writing Markdown, not HTML, and that comes with some problems.

> It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't.

In theory, yes. In practice, using Markdown becomes much less appealing once you start dropping raw HTML all over the place. The whole point of choosing Markdown is that you do not want to spend your time typing <p>, <a>, <li> and the rest. You want to write in Markdown, with only occasional HTML when absolutely necessary.

That is exactly where the author's complaints become relevant. If the solution to Markdown's limitations is routinely switching to HTML, then the argument becomes circular. If you are expected to write HTML to address the author's complaints, why bother with Markdown at all? If the answer is just "write HTML", then you may as well skip Markdown in the first place.

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2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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vorpalhex 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most markdown engines allow short tags to stand in for html, so for frequent features you can just use a short tag.

Alternatively you can extend markdown. I wrote a simple text based game engine that was markdown based but I needed some arbitrary additions appropriate for a game.. so I just added a few elements.

	▲	hysan 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The author addresses this too. Once you start down this path, you go down the road of non-standardization which means losing portability, etc. I don’t see how this is a point against the author?

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henrebotha 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are real limitations to this: You can't arbitrarily mix and match HTML and Markdown. As soon as you introduce an HTML block, you're locked out of Markdown syntax.

AsciiDoc lets you mix and match however you want. Or, put differently: AsciiDoc's superiority over Markdown extends even to being better at shelling out to HTML.

	▲	youngtaff 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		O’Reilly’s authoring system used to use AsciiDoc (may still do), made me hate AsciiDoc
	▲	vidarh 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		While that's true, I'd take Markdown + extensions to allow inline HTML or custom tags over AsciiDoc any day, even at the cost of losing some compatibility - converting that to plain Markdown is usually easy enough.
	▲	tefkah 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		mdx does tho. you could just not define any components, then you can nest markdown inside html no problem

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hizanberg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I also put interactive components in my markdown docs, I’m only using Markdown for content now.