Markdown Is Holding You Back
31 comments
·November 22, 2025dschuessler
henrebotha
There are real limitations to this: You can't arbitrarily mix and match HTML and Markdown. As soon as you introduce an HTML block, you're locked out of Markdown syntax.
AsciiDoc lets you mix and match however you want. Or, put differently: AsciiDoc's superiority over Markdown extends even to being better at shelling out to HTML.
tefkah
mdx does tho. you could just not define any components, then you can nest markdown inside html no problem
jimmar
Markdown is the minimum viable product. It’s easy to learn and still readable if not rendered in an alternate format. It’s great.
For making PDFs, I’ve recently moved from AsciiDoc to Typst. I couldn’t find a good way to get AsciiDoc to make accessible PDFs, and I found myself struggling to control the output. Typst solves all of AsciiDoc’s problems for me.
But in the end, no markup language will make you write better. It’s kind of like saying that ballpoint pens are limiting your writing, so you should switch to mechanical pencils.
undeveloper
typst looks interesting -- but how are you writing it? from what I looked at, it looks like theres an official web editor and a vscode plugin with limited support. this feels pretty limited, as someone who came in expecting something like obsidian.
TRiG_Ireland
I'm not aware of any limitations in the Tinymist plugin.
And you can just write it in the plain text editor of your choice, and keep an eye on the PDF with typst watch.
jrm4
Feels like a great argument...for, I don't know, a bunch of moderately technical high-schoolers who were somehow raised on markdown instead of Microsoft Word and want more power?
No, seriously, who is this for?
neoCrimeLabs
> Markdown Lacks the Structure You Need
I feel like this article makes a lot of valid observations, but then wraps them with a false dilemma.
If it had tried to convince the reader of understanding what formatting needs are required before choosing a format, I would have entirely agreed with it.
Instead I'm left feeling mildly offended, and disagree with it.
prmoustache
The author seems to forget that markdown is just an extension of html. If markdown doesn't provide something that html does, you just write it in html and it will be rendered correctly.
I'd also argue that the limitations of markdown allow me to focus on actual content and less on the presentation. I have little use of all the features of a markup language if I can't remember how to use them.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
It is not features but structure and undetstanding that is missing.
That said I am not sure what the solution is to that since your docs may need structure my docs dont need. Therefore you cant solve the "semantic" outside of a "namespace" of what you agree in your organization.
E.g. you may decide architecture diagrams are in Mermaid but that is by no means a stanfard and my org uses embeded svg.
So to go full circle... you are right just use HTML. After all it's semantic isn't it ;-)
dardeaup
Wow! TIL!
nicoburns
This article doesnt consider Typst, which IMO ought to be the first port of call if Markdown isnt sufficient for your needs.
perlgeek
I've used typst for generating PDFs before, how good is its HTML output?
undeveloper
it looks like typst's html output is under construction [1].
johnathandos
It’s good to spread awareness (or just remind folks) that alternatives to Markdown exist. The right tool for the job depends on your circumstances. If I were scaling a docset for a team of contributors primarily consisting of technical writers, .adoc or .rst would be my preference. If I were scaling internal docs-as-code infra for software engineers, I’d use Markdown.
autogn0me
I would like to point out that asciidork provides ability to get AST representation of asciidoc. It’s very nice package. Not the author but have used it.
dardeaup
This is a timely topic for me. I'm just beginning the writing of a technical book. I plan to target epub/mobi. My research thus far has pointed to markdown -> html -> epub/mobi. If you were going to write a technical ebook would you use markdown or an alternative?
WA
You need:
- table of contents
- automatic chapter and section numbering
- cross references and automatic tracking of figures, tables etc.
- different styles besides blockquotes such as info sections, warnings, tips
Imho, cross-referencing chapters, pages, figures, tables and the lack thereof in Markdown is the first and most important thing to check how you would like this to be solved.
codybontecou
What about markdown do you feel limits you in your writing process?
The beauty of markdown is that it’s standardized. If you find your self midway through the book and feel a need to change formats, it’s easy enough to parse and reformat.
dardeaup
Nothing! I was asking from the point of you that you don't know what you don't know.
macintux
You might look at DocBook. I haven't used it in ~25 years, and then only for short documents, and it is XML hence quite verbose.
But it's explicitly targeted at technical documentation. If nothing else, searching for DocBook alternatives might give you some ideas.
philipwhiuk
> If you're writing a quick README or a short-lived doc, Markdown is fine. It's fast, approachable, and does the job. If you're building a developer documentation site that needs some structure, reStructuredText or AsciiDoc are better choices.
This is dumb. If I'm writing developer documentation I'm not writing it for a machine. And if the aim here is to expose it to a LLM, then the LLM needs to get smarter about semantics, not force us back to formats that are more technically complex to write and maintain in order to re-create 'the semantic web' - a flawed concept that has failed to catch on.
If the LLM needs context on content that humans don't need, the LLM needs fixing, not the content.
> With Markdown as your source, you can't easily go to another format.
File->Print->PDF.
Was that hard? (I admit it's still bizarre that Chrome puts 'Save As PDF' under Print).
(Apparently you can also go via LaTeX if you love a CLI)
dragonwriter
> If I'm writing developer documentation I'm not writing it for a machine. And if the aim here is to expose it to a LLM, then the LLM needs to get smarter about semantics, not force us back to formats that are more technically complex to write and maintain
AsciiDoc is much better than Markdown for docs intended for humans that are more than short, README type of documents. Any advantage it has for documents intended for LLMs is a side effect of that.
zihotki
Many consider AsciiDoc being too complex.
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timpera
It's interesting to see how Markdown keeps getting more and more use, and even native Windows Notepad support!
Animats
The paper makes the point that people keep extending Markdown, badly and incompatibly.
You can include arbitrary HTML tags in Markdown at any place you need them.[0] I am not aware of any Markdown tooling that does not support this.
So, no, Markdown is not holding me back. It is perfectly capable of what the author claims it isn't.
[0]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html