Bringing editing into 2004

HTML is a clumsy language to write in, and I’ve long used a plain text markup language to format posts on this site. Until now, I used an older system called textile. I didn’t use that anywhere but this site, so was always having to look up the syntax. While not an excuse for my lack of writing, the prospect of syntactic frustration did add a further small blockade to my getting started.

This morning, I finally got around to adding support for markdown to the homespun software that powers the site. I use markdown almost every day for work, so am much more familiar with the syntax. I’m not a master by any means, however, and hope that adding support here will encourage me to internalise the syntax rather more. Ideally, I’d get to the stage where I don’t have to think about formatting.

The editor I implemented for the site has always been rather hokey. So, for now, I’m happy to have access to a range of editors that support markdown natively and have had rather more care lavished upon them.

Here’s to more than one post in the next three months.