this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Honestly, this is a pretty badly written and researched article for someone that likes writing so much.
Like, just the opening two paragraphs about Microsoft controlling document formats ... They repeat the same information in both paragraphs and give a rather incomplete history of document formatting.
It's also wild to write that many words about Markdown and never discuss its connection to HTML and its foundation in formatting via declarative intent rather than imperative formatting instructions (i.e. in markdown you dont style your title by saying
bold / underling / font-size:20, you declare your true intent which isthis is the top level title / heading, but that all comes from the underlying structure of HTML which markdown is basically just a simplification of.In Markdown and HTML and TeX and even Microsoft Word you're supposed to just use the Heading 1 style option instead of manually changing the style of the paragraph text. There are times when you don't want to use Word, most commonly because you're managing your documents as text files in a source code management system or because you're an LLM and you're incapable of anything besides Unicode text, and it has some limitations that make it unsuitable for typesetting, but it's not bad for word processing, and the file types aren't that terrible to work with anymore. People just don't know how to use it.
Some of this is the fault of the design of Word. Even modern versions have direct formatting in the Home tab, to the left (chronologically "before" for people used to left-to-right paradigms) of the styles box. The styles box itself becomes rapidly less accessible if the window is not full sized.
If they moved direct formatting to a formatting tab, had a more focused concept of styles, and possibly repurposed some of the direct formatting buttons for quick style application, people would use them a lot more reliably without any training.
I'm less hopeful. People would just switch to the formatting tab and use that. Most people center text on a title page by repeatedly hitting the enter key to go down and then the space key to go right and then they get to the next page by pressing the enter key until they get to the first line of the next page like they're using a typewritter.
I wouldn't describe it as "bad", but because of repetitiveness and vagueness I'd say it's a draft that could've used a couple of re-reads by the author. It sells well because it's rightfully so dumping on Microsoft.
It's not even particularly accurate or nuanced in its history of Microsoft's actions and the doc formats, it doesn't mention any competitors, it doesn't mention anything about the history of type setting generally or more advanced projects like LaTex, and at a fundamental level, it's edited worse than my first year essays.
It spends like 2000 words just to say markdown good because it focuses on intent rather than a particular style.
Yes, I would describe it as bad.
Hmm okay, fair enough.