stereoboosterI like Markdown for its simplicity. Simplicity comes with limitations. There are some features that I miss in Markdown or it is possible to extend Markdown to support these cases, but there is no support from the Hugo side (static site generator I use).
Note: I can’t use JS to do additional rendering on the client-side, because:
- I cross-post my articles, which means that articles should contain only HTML and images (JS will not work on 3-rd party website)
- I care about the speed of my website and each JS script is a penalty for performance
Features
Diagrams
I would like to create diagrams with-in markdown. Something like this:
``mermaid
graph TD;
A-->B;
A-->C;
B-->D;
C-->D;
``
Which would render:
Diagrams can be described, for example, with: flowchart.js, js-sequence-diagrams, mermaid, PlantUML, WaveDrom, Viz.js, vega, ditaa, etc.
Support :
My workaround: use JS script which detects code-blocks with diagrams, renders them, and replaces code-blocks with the rendered images.
Euler diagrams
See examples here:
Support :
- Markdown: Yes
- Hugo: No
- Editor preview: No
XKCD-style
I’d like to use XKCD-style for diagrams that are meant to illustrate something but are not based on scientific data.
For example, xkcd #1064:
Support :
- Markdown: Yes
- Hugo: No
- Editor preview: doesn’t matter
Math notation
I don’t need anything fancy - some Greek letters, superscript, and subscript. Most of the time copy-paste Unicode characters, for example: Σ¹. But there are some edge cases, for example, there is no superscript variation for the asterisk (*).
It would be nice to use AsciiMath inside Markdown, like this:
Inline:
$Sigma^**$
Which would render: Σ*
Block:
$$
sum_(i=1)^n i^3=((n(n+1))/2)^2
$$
Which would render:
Support :
2-column layout
Sometimes I need to show two images side-by-side, so that reader can compare them easily. I can use a table for this, but it looks ugly (a table has a header and borders). Plus tables don’t work for code-blocks.
Support :
- Markdown: No
Side notes
It would be nice to support side notes, like in Tufte layout. Theoretically, it is possible to reuse footnotes:
Here's a simple footnote,[^1] and here's a longer one.[^bignote]
Indent paragraphs to include them in the footnote.
`{ my code }`
Add as many paragraphs as you like.
Support :
- Markdown: Yes?
- Hugo: No
- Editor preview: No
Other ideas
Collspan and rowspan for tables, superscript (30^th^), subscript (H~2~O).
Alternatives
Hugo
I’m considering 11ty. Also need to check pandoc.
