Keep The Markup, Improve The Editor

Tim O’Brien said:

I’ve been writing some APT of late, and it’s painful. Actually, on second thought almost everything that involves working with any sort of markup (no matter how lightweight) is incompatible with writing. It is difficult enough to proofread, nevermind having to constantly switch between the Wiki-esque markup of APT and then having to sit through a site generation. It’s amazing how often developers fall into the trap of changing technical details like file formats instead of actually doing the hard work to provide a simple intuitive interface. The problem is, users don’t want simpler they want simple. No matter how much you simplify a markup language, it’s still something the user has to learn and then constantly think about instead of being able to focus on what they actually want to do.

Authors want to see the document how it will finish up, not view a simplistic form. They don’t want to wait while you generate a preview for them – they don’t want to have to think about previews at all. So next time you find yourself thinking about adopting a simpler format, stop and ask yourself if what you really need is a better editor. It doesn’t matter if it’s images, HTML or arranging a photo-album, make the editor intuitive and WYSIWYG and you won’t need to invent yet another simpler language.