Markdown is also aiming for the 'readable as a text file' and really is a very similar technology to Gosh. Also, whether they are .gosh files, or text files that happen to implement gosh doesn't matter much, just as .md doesn't matter really (unless the viewer has special case rendering for one or the other)
Imo its really, is it worth the hassle to switch from something already known and liked (gosh) to the very similar competing format (markdown) to gain compatibility with the surrounding ecosystem.
I can't say for the dev team if its worth it for them either way, but I think it's misguided to say that gosh is inherently more powerful or something.
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I first saw the discussion on this I thought "oh no, hopefully someone doesn't try to conform us into MD." There is a taller stack of deeper problems with the reasoning of the humans who do what you did, but I will restrain from writing an unpragmatic response, focusing on concrete details.
You say:
"I propose that Genode adopts Markdown instead of GOSH.
Markdown has become the standard format for nearly all Open Source projects and Git hosting sites. GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Codeberg/Forgejo all use Markdown, none support GOSH format.
I can read Markdown in GitHub repositories using my Android phone with the GitHub app. I cannot read GOSH files on a phone or tablet. This makes it harder to read correctly rendered GOSH files compared to Markdown. If I want to read a rendered GOSH document(not in plain text), I must clone the Genode & GOSH repo, install GOSH & TCL/TK, export the GOSH files to HTML or LaTeX from the command line, then view in PDF or HTML viewer. This is not simple compared to Markdown which is rendered natively on almost any device."
"GOSH is a tool for converting plain ASCII text to LaTeX and other document
formats. Its main design criteria was to use a syntax that is perfectly
readable as plain ASCII text and the support of different target formats.
The source files of GOSH have a very simple syntax that is similar to the
usenet style. Everyone, who ever wrote a mail using an plain ASCII editor
will be able to write GOSH texts.
; Actually, the file you are reading right now is a GOSH text file.
GOSH supports multiple target formats by different backends, which are
available as separate files. By now, there exists the built-in LaTeX backend,
a simple HTML backend and a man-page backend."
The Gosh **format** is more universal than markdown, because one can read it on any device that displays txt-file. Lack of rendering does not prevent one from reading the files. Therefore your premise is certainly unsound.
But is format the real point of Gosh? In my view structurally Gosh sits or should sit below any document file format. There are no .gosh files, only a syntax for txt-files, and that syntax has the purpose of (1) being readable universally (2) acting as a "middle-man" of the conversation job.
The second one is a good idea: for new formats, the problem will always be how to convert this to Gosh (1 problem) instead of how to convert this to others (~ n problems). Also, it improves security, because we can know / can know that conversions should not be able to do anything more than what Gosh can.
Thus, why not add (bi-directional) support for markdown to Gosh? I feel like you could then propose this again for the GitHub.
>
>
>
> I propose that Genode adopts Markdown instead of GOSH.
>
> Markdown has become the standard format for nearly all Open Source projects and Git hosting sites. GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Codeberg/Forgejo all use Markdown, none support GOSH format.
>
> I can read Markdown in GitHub repositories using my Android phone with the GitHub app. I cannot read GOSH files on a phone or tablet. This makes it harder to read correctly rendered GOSH files compared to Markdown. If I want to read a rendered GOSH document(not in plain text), I must clone the Genode & GOSH repo, install GOSH & TCL/TK, export the GOSH files to HTML or LaTeX from the command line, then view in PDF or HTML viewer. This is not simple compared to Markdown which is rendered natively on almost any device.
>
> FOSS is a collaborative community. To make an open source project successful, It is important to use common formats and tools so the community can collaborate easily. The higher the barrier to entry, the less likely it is for people to bother contributing.
>
> Switching to Markdown does not lose the benefits of LaTeX. The Git hosting sites as listed above, support inline LaTeX rendering within Markdown documents for mathematical expressions and diagrams. Markdown is used on these Git hosting sites for writing documentation, wiki, comments, issues, README, blogs and web pages etc.
>
> Having an appealing looking GitHub repository is important as it could be the first time a user encounters the project, thus setting their first impressions. If using GOSH, which isn't rendered correctly, they may not decide to look further into the project as it looks unappealing. Most users won't try to learn or use GOSH because it is not a portable skill or format outside of the Genode projects.
>
> I would be happy to contribute by working on converting GOSH files to Markdown format. I have already converted all 9 README files of the 9 public Genodelabs GitHub repositories to Markdown. I could continue doing this. However I don't want to waste my time doing something that wouldn't be accepted by the Genode project.
>
> There is an automatic way to convert all the GOSH documents to Markdown.
>
> First, export GOSH documents to HTML or LaTeX. Then use a HTML or LaTeX to Markdown converter, then it will be automatically written to native Markdown. Thus saving manual labour.
>
> These tools can be used to convert from HTML to Markdown format automatically:
>
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