I use simple markup for all my stuff too, but I actually agree with Chris Wage that editors should be the right thing. That is, for the lightest-weight markup, like italics and boldface, it's trivial for the editor to get right and not generate hideous HTML, and you don't have to usurp symbols that get used in programming all the time and have to increase visual noise escaping them.

But, as you say, editors tend to be newbie-oriented, or they tend to be too completist, providing more functionality than we really need.

As well, simple markup still has the huge advantage of being useable from any machine with a text editor. (Although it's actually not for me because my markup-to-html converter is an offline program, unfortunately.)

-- nothings

I totally agree with the need for a simple, clean, and elegant markup language, that looks as much as possible like "regular text".

I believe, though, that this problem has mostly been solved by ReStructured text. The invention of yet another system can only lead to confusion and unnecessary incompatibilities (even if it is marginally better that the existing ones).

Please build on the work of others, don't try to reinvent the wheel at every step.

Nick Patavalis http://npat.efault.net

One honest answer for 'why not ReStructured text' is that at the time I created DWikiText it didn't really cross my path; I looked almost entirely at various wikitexts (and Markdown). If I'd noticed ReSt and paid attention, I might have used at least some of its markup; instead, I mostly took from wikitexts.

The other short answer is that while its section formatting is nice, I don't like its text formatting. I also think it would collide, sometimes explosively, with writing naturally about Unix (especially its use of `), although I'm not sure; ReSt uses a bunch of magic (not always a good thing).

For my goals I would have had to augment the ReSt engine and markup anyways, since I wanted WikiWords and other internal links.