Comment by nvader
1 month ago
I think there is another article waiting to be written, why ReStructured Text lost.
I know that in my younger years I would get a lot of flak for converting .rst files into .md when I joined projects.
(As I got older I just stopped seeing .rst that much)
rST was better at structured content with its directives etc, but it was too complicated for non-techies, too much repeated punctuation and careful indenting.
Now we have markdown which is unable to express the structured parts, with a flea market of less-good extensions, some raw HTML snippets, and in general have lowered the bar to not even attempt the things rST is capable of.
Instead of rST, the markdown ecosystem is leaning toward "some fenced code blocks are magic", with user-unfriendly goop in them that is hidden by the UI (when one happens to use the one blessed UI for that flavor). And that approach can't solve inline directives.
I love reST and I think it lost primarily because of distribution. I.e., the people using it did not have large audiences and didn't put much effort into promoting it.
It's a shame because reST is almost as easy on the eyes as Markdown and is much more capable without being too much more complex.
> I know that in my younger years I would get a lot of flak for converting .rst files into .md when I joined projects.
Why would you do that? Seems terribly impolite to join a project and start breaking things...
Yes. With youth comes a lot of zeal along with a lack of respect for the established ways of doing things. Having convinced myself that Markdown was "better" than ReST, I couldn't see why anyone would disagree with me.
Learning is a process.
rST is still fairly popular in Python circles, especially for anyone using Sphinx.