Lost Boy

Thoughts on Markup Tools

Great post from Dorothea on requirements for good markup tools.

I agree with everything she says, and follow a few of the habits she lists myself: I tend to write an article and then markup it up, unless its only a very very short piece; and always fill in my URLs after the fact. I also hate tree based views, I only find them even vaguely useful when I'm writing XSLT.

That said I do personally find Wiki markup pretty unencumbering so do tend to markup as I write when editing a Wiki. But thats mainly because Wiki markup generally involves the same "gesture" (to borrow Dorotheas term) at the beginning and end.

New Tools and Old Habits