Hello Jack,
thank you for sharing your impression on our project as someone with an untainted view.
I share your sentiment regarding the advantages of Markdown over GOSH. In fact, I'm casually using Markdown for projects unrelated to Genode for the reasons you stated.
Genode uses GOSH because no other simple text-markup syntax was established at the infancy of our project more than 15 years ago. At that time, GOSH existed already for more than 4 years and was fairly mature. However, I vividly remember that Christian and me tried deliberately to *avoid* using GOSH for Genode because we did not want to distract ourselves with tooling for text processing. Among the many tools we reviewed were (an early version of) Markdown, reStructured text, and the media-wiki format. Out of frustration with those, we ultimately went back to GOSH and lived happy ever since. In the meantime, we wrote more than 200 thousand lines of GOSH text, not even counting the articles at Genodians.org.
Today, 15 years later, as you remarked, Markdown is widely established. If we started Genode today, the choice of Markdown would be obvious. So why has Genode not embraced Markdown yet? For two reasons:
(1) Consistency trumps form
High internal consistency within the project allows seasoned developers to work together in a joyful manner without friction. There is a single configuration syntax (XML), there is one coding style we adhere to, all of our custom scripts use the same scripting language (Tcl), and all texts are written in the same markup format (GOSH).
For newcomers, those particular choices are certainly worth criticizing and may present barriers of entry. On the other hand, the project's high degree of internal consistency is of immeasurable value for the developers who are highly invested in the project and drive it forward. Everyone in the boat speaks the same language. So we can converse with substance and without friction.
The internal consistency of Genode is principled and not negotiable. Unless we commit to make the transition to Markdown our goal for all of Genode's text work, text will need to remain formatted in GOSH style.
(2) Control over tooling gives superpowers
Even though we tried to avoid our home-cooked GOSH tool initially, in hindsight our decision has been a resounding success. Since we master the tool, we can adjust it easily for all of our needs. The GOSH tool empowers the CMS of genode.org, the Genode books, the nicely formatted documentation of 'goa help', the Genodians.org blog, and even the business letters of our company. It satisfies all our needs so nicely because it is built specifically for our needs. For us at Genode Labs, there is no alternative to it.
Your question of whether Genode might adopt Markdown or not comes down to the question for a tangible migration plan that keeps (1) and (2) intact. Finding and executing such a plan is certainly possible. But it is a far greater ambition than the reformatting of a bunch of files.
Personally, I think that Genode should eventually move to Markdown. Avoiding discussions like this one would be reason enough. Hence, it comes down to prioritizing work. When weighting the purported benefits of this topic against the many points on our current road map [1], I find the effort not justifiable today. Once we discuss the road map for next year, you might bring it up for consideration then.
[1] https://genode.org/about/road-map
Jana's suggestion of making GOSH interoperable with Markdown is very sensible. It is concerned about a plan (how to get there?), not merely a goal (want this). The idea could be explored as an off-and-on effort without any haste. I'm almost tempted to try. ;-)
Regards Norman