master markdown

Just discovered Pandoc which is a platform independent command line program that can handle Markdown files. My favorite feature about Pandoc is that it can even convert HTML files to Markdown encoded TXT files. Which is just what I needed as now it is trivial to convert the few format dependent documents that I have from DOC or RTF to HTML before taking them to Markdown files. Also if one uses windows MarkdownPad is another great program which provides a text editor on the left side for writing Markdown text files with a few shortcut features with a real time HTML preview on the right side. Only thing that I have against it is that unlike Notepad++ it does not have spellcheck but oh well the combination of the two programs still get the job done.

When it comes to one’s ability to keep computer text based documents in formats that are readable long term, one’s options are pretty limited mainly TXT HTML and RTF. Plain text files are good for their small size and how they are easily searchable on the computer and the blessing or cure of the simple nature of not allowing formatting codes. HTML files are still plain text based which allow them to be easily searched on a computer and allows formatting but that makes them hard to read as is without a HTML viewer/web browser. Rich Text files while they have more formatting options tend to require full fledged word processors with a lot of bloated features and as an encoded file format can not be easily searched out on the computer.

Markdown on the other hand is a plain text based document with formatting codes that makes it still readable in its plain text format, yet can be effortlessly converted to HTML with a script or simple program which makes it suitable for printing or converting to PDF or another format to pass on to people that just have to have more complicated formatting in the articles and reports that they read. If you ever played around with the formatting codes on 43T than you have already used a light markup language that is pretty similar to Markdown.