I don’t think anyone who gets really familiar with org can ever honestly say with a straight face that Markdown is adequate in comparison.

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KarlVoit an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I did and I mentioned very particular reasons and arguments.

You posted an opinion. Now, I'm very curious how you came to your conclusion: was is adequate? How to you compare?

Did you read the article and got the reasons mentioned why MD can be problematic?

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drob518 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“Adequate” is a very relative term. Adequate for what? The fact that Markdown is widely used quite successfully demonstrates that it is adequate for a wide variety of tasks. Yes, Org mode might cover more of the long tail, but Markdown clearly covers all the important cases to the point that it has achieved wide adoption.

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iLemming 18 hours ago | parent [-]

> it is adequate for a wide variety of tasks

Is it though? Like for example, I often deal with Org-mode documents of several thousand lines of text and I honestly don't know any piece of software that can acceptably handle multi-thousand lines of markdown.

Emacs/Org-mode has tons of different ways to navigate and search through these large bodies - the outline nature of the structure is perfect for that - there's narrowing, collapsing/expanding, sparse-tree search, flexible sorting, indirect buffers, imenu, overlays and text properties that can render the text conditionally, etc.

I read HN and Reddit threads in Org-mode format¹; I browse my Jira board and tickets in Org-mode², I have Wiktionary lookup³ and Thesaurus⁴ - all in Org-mode.

¹ https://youtu.be/ud3Gmxg5UZg

² https://github.com/agzam/go-jira.el

³ https://github.com/agzam/wiktionary-bro.el

⁴ https://github.com/agzam/mw-thesaurus.el

Comparing Org-mode and Markdown and saying "Markdown is widely used [and thus it's better]" is wildly immature - popularity doesn't determine fitness for purpose - PHP is more widely used than Rust or Zig, but that doesn't make it "better" for systems programming.

I can agree, Markdown is adequate for relatively small documents like README files, but it's nowhere close to even try to compete with Org-mode in so many different aspects far beyond just the markdown format structure.

	▲	drob518 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s awesome. Clearly, you are an Org format rockstar. But be that as it may, if Markdown is inadequate for a variety of tasks, why do people use it for a variety of tasks? Your rebuttal is just “Here’s a task or two that I do that I think Org format is better for.” Fine. I don’t have an opinion about your tasks. I believe you that Org is better for those for you. But neither do those cases rebut the fact that MANY MORE people use Markdown quite successfully on a daily basis than Org for a wide variety of tasks (blogging, documentation, personal information management, etc.). Can Org also do those things? Yes, surely. Can Org do more than those things? Surely. But so can Markdown. So, if you want to say “Org format is better for ME and I can do more with it because it’s more feature full,” then I’d reply, “I’m sure you’re right.” But if you’re saying “Org is better for everyone,” well, then, the data just doesn’t support that. And for the record I did not say that “Markdown is better.” You are putting words in my mouth. I said it was adequate for a wide variety of tasks. It works. It is sufficient. My proof for that is that it’s widely used for a variety of tasks. That’s it. Q.E.D.

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Spivak a day ago | parent | prev [-]

If you mean org mode as it exists within the software emacs then yeah it's no contest. No markdown editor even comes close.

But if you mean just the file format as it's used by say like Github to render README files then yeah markdown is perfectly adequate and org mode doesn't really bring a whole lot to the party.