On Thursday 17 November 2011 11:25:23 am Calvin Morrison wrote:
> On 17 November 2011 11:10, Kristopher John Gamrat
<chaotickjg@gmail.com>wrote:
> > On Thursday 17 November 2011 10:25:58 am Marvin L. Jones wrote:
> > > On Thu, 17 Nov 2011, Calvin Morrison wrote:
> > > >But if we are suggesting that our users are incapable of editing
> > > > markup of any kind, I seriously doubt their ability to use patch,
> > > > diff, and git commands.
> > >
> > > You expect _users_ to be doing patch, diff, and git commands?
> > > I  don't  think  so.
> >
> > If the website view of the git repository allows people to download files
> > directly, they don't need to use git. They can just submit it to us and
> > we can upload it to git. It would just be easier for those who do know
> > git.
> >
> > > Is it too late to put in a request to do documentation in WordStar?
> > > Now, there's a markup language _I_ know!  :-)
> > > (I have it running here on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS...)
> >
> > I don't think we'll accept any requests for any markup languages. If you
> > can
> > find something that'll do the job efficiently without making it any
> > harder than opening a standard word processor, then it's not too late.
>
> A standard word processor? you mean libreoffice.

LibreOffice Write, MS Word, etc. It just lets you do normal word processing.

> I've been double checking and I can't find fodt support in Abiword,
> msoffice, and I don't think Word Perfect does it either.
>
>
> Another reason to use markup is because it is standardized. With a regular
> office application, users would spend a lot of time selecting and making
> sure font sizes, formatting, and other things are correct. With markdown
> you don't do any of this.

How will it look right if it's not formatted correctly? Even with HTML (which
is markup), you need to format with things like size, fonts, and colors.

> I think saying "we are not going to use any markdown because we dont want
> our contributors to have to learn anything, even remotely simple" is a bad
> philosophy. I understand if they were going to be using LaTex (quite
> complicated) or writing in C++, but markdown is designed exactly for these
> sort of things.

People already need to learn TDE, maybe even the computer. Those of us who
grew up with computers and/or using Linux for awhile won't find that hard,
but new inexperienced TDE users who want to contribute as a way of saying
thanks are going to spend enough time getting adjusted. They might only learn
one or two apps really well and be trying to learn everything else they need.
We do want them to learn, we don't want to put them into overload.