Standardizing Markdown Mapping to Books and Documentation
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Abstract
Markdown is an amazing way of writing text that can generate HTML. At Leanpub, we realized this would also work for ebooks, and experiences over the last few years have proven this idea correct. Now the idea has spread, with both other startups and enterprises targeting a Markdown-first workflow. However, there is still no Markdown spec, and no standardized mapping of Markdown concepts to book and documentation concepts. And the process of standardizing Markdown is fraught with peril, with the recent CommonMark episode being a prime example. In this talk, I will advocate for the creation of a standard mapping from Markdown concepts to book and documentation concepts, and for a standard set of extensions to support technical books and enterprise documentation requirements. I will also explain why we’re creating Leanpub Enterprise to serve the documentation needs of the enterprise, and highlight some of the choices we are making.
