[TxMt] Re: Mail language scope

[Jacob Rus]

Allan Odgaard wrote:
> On 25. Oct 2006, at 18:11, Jeremy Amos wrote:
>> On Oct 25, 2006, at 11:24 AM, Fred B wrote:
>>>> Two other things I dislike about using Markdown for email is that
>>>> bold (⌘B) wraps the text in two asterisks (and visually *bla* is
>>>> italic),
>>> Totally agree.
>> Shouldn't Markdown for email be using **bla** for bold (since that 
>> translates to <strong> AFAIK)?
> 
> It does, I meant two asterisks on each side.
> 
>> And I'd argue that *bla* is visually bold, whereas _bla_ is visually 
>> italic.
> 
> Yes, I was also surprised when I first read the Markdown syntax, because 
> it says it was inspired by email de facto standards, where we have done 
> *bold*, /italic/, and _underline_ for more than a decade, and then 
> Markdown not only treats * and _ the same, it allows __bold__ and 
> *italic*, that’s just weird.

Personally I feel that this is fine.  *This text* is emphasized, and 
**This text** is strongly emphasized.  That makes plenty of sense to me. 
  People should think about the semantic uses rather than the visual 
result.  In actual published materials, bold is unbelievably rare in 
prose, and italics are used all the time for emphaasis.  Such should 
also be the case in html documents, where italics are *perfectly 
adequate* for conveying emphasis.  IMO, asterisks do a much better job 
of conveying emphasis than either slashes or underscores, and so 
markdown syntax works just fine for me.  I think John Gruber has come to 
regret allowing `_`'s to be used for the same purpose, as they would be 
nice to have for other things, and having two methods of marking 
something bold leads to ambiguity.  For instance, it might be nice 
sometimes to allow ^ and _ for super/subscript.

But if you want to read a discussion about this at much greater length, 
skim back through the markdown mailing list archives.  There are some 
quite spirited debates about this particular part of the syntax.

-Jacob Rus