it’s time for the next step

markdown is broken.

broken into too many different flavors.

most of which manifest inconsistencies.

or have ambiguities that confuse people.

or simply do not do what needs to be done.

i’ve been working on my own form of light-markup.

it was initially based on the project gutenberg corpus.

i’ve spent about 15 years, making sure i got it right.

in the meantime, i was happy to defer to markdown.

i hoped it would succeed, so i could drop my thing.

because it can be a lot of work to shepherd a project.

unless… you know… you decide you will just ignore it.

but now it’s time to admit that markdown is broken.

so let’s start over, and go beyond markdown.

my system is called “zen markup language”.

you can call it “z.m.l.” if you like, or just “zen”.

i will introduce it more fully down the line, but

here is an encapsulation of its major philosophy:

a light-markup format for long-form text

simple enough for a 4th-grader to grok it

deploying to the full set of output formats

geared equally for writers, readers, coders

powerful range of state-of-the-art features

including change-tracking/version-control

complete variety of simple, powerful apps

tools that run well on every major platform

interactive instruction apps to teach deeply

no bugs, no ambiguities, no inconsistencies

fleet-of-feet on greeting new opportunities

good responsiveness to an active user-base

supremely flexible for private customizing

resistance to public forks and “extensions”

no technical debt to others, e.g., markdown

dedicated to improving the ability to re-mix

guaranteeing clear access to structured text

built to facilitate new vibrant cyber-libraries

leaving the past, and moving into our future

exercise your voice if you’d like to have a choice.

edit on 2014/09/25 to add this link to part 2 in this series:

beyond markdown — part 2 — z.m.l. was built to be easy to understand

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-2-b3527d2b9dcf

edit on 2014/09/28 to add this link to part 3 in the series:

beyond markdown — part 3 — two types of chunks — paragraphs and blocks

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-3-eed9bebea0da

edit on 2014/09/30 to add this link to part 4 in the series:

beyond markdown — part 4 — how to “tag” a block for formatting

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-4-9b4dc6841d7e

edit on 2014/10/03 to add this link to part 5 in the series:

beyond markdown — part 5 — shining a spotlight on sections and headers

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-5-4902097723b0

edit on 2014/10/06 to add this link to part 6 in the series:

beyond markdown — part 6 — notes on a few types of “special” paragraphs

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-6-8056eee5b783

edit on 2014/10/07 to add this link to part 7 in the series:

beyond markdown — part 7 — text styling and typographic niceties

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-7-3158e23f22bf

edit on 2014/10/08 to add this link to part 8in the series:

beyond markdown — part 8 — alignment, horizontal rules, and breaks

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-8-1a082d7f1f6d

beyond markdown — part 9 — pulling outside resources into your document

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-9-be74bbbed369

beyond markdown — part 10 — special sections in your document

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-10-3ca0c08e5641

***

and, for reference, as an extra bonus:

markdown considered harmful — or perhaps a loved but irritating old uncle

https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/markdown-considered-harmful-495ccfe24a52