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Timeline for We're switching to CommonMark

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

146 events
when toggle format what by license comment
Nov 27, 2020 at 7:56 comment added This_is_NOT_a_forum Related: Feature Preview: Table Support
Nov 20, 2020 at 8:44 comment added tripleee Tab rendering bug: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/403016/…
Oct 21, 2020 at 13:33 history edited Rob
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Oct 15, 2020 at 7:16 answer added simonpa71 timeline score: 8
Oct 14, 2020 at 12:14 comment added Trunk Elaborate and respecful notification to members. I wish all changes to the StackOverflow tech stack were accompanied by similar advisories. It's not nice to learn from third parties on the web that StackOverflow uses such-and-such a technology for some aspect of its website.
Oct 7, 2020 at 17:16 answer added hkotsubo timeline score: 0
Oct 6, 2020 at 10:02 answer added Luuklag timeline score: 2
Sep 25, 2020 at 14:41 answer added schtandard timeline score: 1
Sep 17, 2020 at 13:31 answer added Lionel Rowe timeline score: 1
Sep 13, 2020 at 21:34 history edited user313042 CC BY-SA 4.0
grammar
Sep 13, 2020 at 21:28 history edited Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog CC BY-SA 4.0
see /posts/comments/1167297
Jul 31, 2020 at 13:24 comment added Luuklag Possibly related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/352506/…
Jul 28, 2020 at 6:45 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod @Braiam No, they weren't.
Jul 25, 2020 at 16:09 comment added Braiam @Ham Were tag wiki's part of the migration?
Jul 3, 2020 at 16:45 comment added ChrisW Are you going to fix, will this change affect, this bug? meta.stackexchange.com/q/347187/139866
Jul 1, 2020 at 10:28 answer added CherryDT timeline score: 7
S Jul 1, 2020 at 4:08 history bounty ended Jeff Atwood
S Jul 1, 2020 at 4:08 history notice removed Jeff Atwood
Jun 30, 2020 at 13:00 history edited Yaakov EllisStaffMod
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Jun 30, 2020 at 8:25 answer added Jesse timeline score: 4
Jun 29, 2020 at 11:43 answer added CherryDT timeline score: 3
Jun 29, 2020 at 9:27 answer added SQB timeline score: 5
S Jun 28, 2020 at 17:35 history bounty started Jeff Atwood
S Jun 28, 2020 at 17:35 history notice added Jeff Atwood Reward existing answer
Jun 28, 2020 at 17:29 comment added Jeff Atwood Yay! Fantastic! I've updated the commonmark.org website to reflect this change!
Jun 24, 2020 at 15:19 comment added William Elliot Is this newfangled mark thing the reason why Mathjax now appears too large to fit within the line causing almost one half of the letters to be truncated vertically making the mathjax unreadable?
Jun 24, 2020 at 13:21 answer added Martin Schröder timeline score: 4
Jun 23, 2020 at 10:03 answer added Maarten Bodewes timeline score: 5
Jun 23, 2020 at 9:58 answer added Martin Prikryl timeline score: 4
Jun 23, 2020 at 7:13 history edited iBug says Reinstate Monica CC BY-SA 4.0
Make current status more visible, 🍎
Jun 22, 2020 at 11:06 history edited Ham VockeStaffMod
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Jun 20, 2020 at 8:31 comment added justhalf Very good communication here, referencing past interactions with community, unlike the other feature just released...
Jun 19, 2020 at 13:39 answer added Bobson timeline score: 5
Jun 19, 2020 at 3:46 history edited iBug says Reinstate Monica CC BY-SA 4.0
🍎
Jun 18, 2020 at 16:58 answer added cubick timeline score: 11
Jun 18, 2020 at 7:59 answer added GSerg timeline score: 4
Jun 17, 2020 at 21:11 answer added Fattie timeline score: 1
Jun 17, 2020 at 9:55 answer added Adám timeline score: 12
Jun 17, 2020 at 8:47 answer added Luuklag timeline score: 10
Jun 17, 2020 at 1:59 comment added Mentalist Sounds good. Could we please have Cmd H not add #, because it means the browser can't be hidden if typing. On a related note, can we please have images get sized for Retina Display by default so we no longer need to do this to make our posts look good? That would be excellent!
Jun 16, 2020 at 20:17 answer added Exempt-Medic timeline score: 5
Jun 16, 2020 at 17:10 comment added Bohemian Will we ever get highlighting within code blocks?
Jun 15, 2020 at 15:23 comment added Bruno Brant I don't think commonmark - or the desire to standardize markdown - gets the attention it deserves. I'm glad SO will be added to the supporters.
Jun 14, 2020 at 7:08 answer added Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog timeline score: 5
Jun 14, 2020 at 3:03 answer added user313042 timeline score: 4
Jun 13, 2020 at 7:05 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod @P.Mort.-forgotClayShirky_q With CommonMark, everything that's supposed to belong to a list item needs to be indented as far as the content of parent list item. The spec is kinda hard to read on this one but playing around with this example should show what I mean.
Jun 13, 2020 at 3:00 review Suggested edits
Jun 13, 2020 at 6:08
Jun 12, 2020 at 19:00 comment added This_is_NOT_a_forum Are you sure 4 spaces are not required in lists (instead of one now (and somewhat more later) as claimed in this question - near "To make a paragraph part of a list item")?
Jun 12, 2020 at 16:35 answer added GlorfindelMod timeline score: 11
Jun 12, 2020 at 0:00 answer added curiousdannii timeline score: 4
Jun 11, 2020 at 22:02 answer added Wrzlprmft timeline score: 6
Jun 11, 2020 at 17:32 answer added R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE timeline score: 5
Jun 11, 2020 at 17:31 comment added R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE Also, re: mathjax on all sites. Kill mathjax with fire and replace it with katex!
Jun 11, 2020 at 17:30 comment added R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE How is this going to affect site performance? Right now, Stack Exchange and its Markdown rendering is one of the only remaining sites on the internet that's blazingly fast, without UX lag all over the place. Will this stay the same under the new renderer? Or will the new CommonMark implementation be built on ten layers of obscenely bloated JS frameworks that makes the browser slow to a crawl and makes the site unusable, like basically every other dynamic site has become?
Jun 11, 2020 at 17:10 history edited iBug says Reinstate Monica CC BY-SA 4.0
Add a link to quickly go through *screens* of text, 🍎
Jun 11, 2020 at 8:25 comment added n. m. could be an AI So there will be a common renderer (or two renderers) across all sites. Does this mean extras like MathJax will also be supported across all sites? If not, why not?
Jun 11, 2020 at 6:19 answer added Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog timeline score: 9
Jun 11, 2020 at 0:19 history edited Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog CC BY-SA 4.0
added 8 characters in body
Jun 10, 2020 at 23:27 answer added Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog timeline score: 9
Jun 10, 2020 at 23:04 comment added FeRD #TIL (swidt?) that you're supposed to put a space after your heading hashmarks in Markdown! #WHOKNEW? (Not I. I did not know.) ...Don't tell me you're supposed to do it with code fences, too? I don't see myself ever getting used to writing '``` python', too much GFM for that to stick now.
Jun 10, 2020 at 20:44 answer added schtandard timeline score: 8
Jun 10, 2020 at 18:34 answer added AJNeufeld timeline score: 1
Jun 10, 2020 at 16:26 answer added Athari timeline score: 3
Jun 10, 2020 at 14:17 comment added Mast @FabianRöling There's also options like AsciiFlow.
Jun 10, 2020 at 6:13 answer added GlorfindelMod timeline score: 14
Jun 10, 2020 at 0:14 comment added Clonkex @Basj "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Except that it is broke(n). The code is not easy to maintain or make changes without breaking things. That counts as broken in the world of programming.
Jun 9, 2020 at 10:58 comment added ssokolow @bottlenecked I'd disagree with him there. Going one direction, the core business function you need to understand properly is rich text entry (i.e. frontend experience), not necessarily rich text sanitization. Going the other direction, using regexes rather than writing the parser from scratch is abdicating your responsibility. (It'd be like arguing that it's imperative that you write your 3D engine from scratch because you're a game designer.)
Jun 9, 2020 at 7:51 comment added bottlenecked I remembered this old post from Jeff Atwood on why he choose to write the parser by hand and thought to share blog.codinghorror.com/programming-is-hard-lets-go-shopping
Jun 8, 2020 at 23:55 comment added Machavity Not sure if this is related meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/398089/…
Jun 8, 2020 at 13:32 answer added Zoe - Save the data dump timeline score: 8
Jun 7, 2020 at 14:46 comment added CubicleSoft To clean up HTML as you mention in your post, you should be using a real HTML parser that uses a proper state engine under the hood like TagFilter. There are plenty of edge cases that a regex will miss.
Jun 7, 2020 at 14:39 comment added CubicleSoft They’re using regular expressions for transforming Markdown into HTML (I’ll leave it to your imagination how much sweat and tears this has cost us over the years)... I'd guess a lot. Like most computing problems, this problem was solved back in the 1960's. You should always use a formal state engine implementation for things that require a state engine like textual parsers, tokenizers, and the like, not hacks like regexes. I blame Comp. Sci courses that today tend to teach Finite State Machines using theoretical approaches rather than practical implementations.
S Jun 7, 2020 at 11:15 history suggested anon CC BY-SA 4.0
Fixed typo.
Jun 7, 2020 at 10:47 review Suggested edits
S Jun 7, 2020 at 11:15
Jun 7, 2020 at 9:41 answer added Ainar-G timeline score: 2
Jun 6, 2020 at 15:36 answer added Jeff timeline score: 4
Jun 6, 2020 at 13:54 answer added doppelgreener timeline score: 17
Jun 5, 2020 at 9:01 comment added Christian Rau @MetaAndrewT. YouTube embedding is, however, but it's also included in that list, so that might not be outdated at all.
Jun 5, 2020 at 9:00 comment added Christian Rau @Robotnik Spoiler blocks aren't an extra feature technically. They are available to every site, but (1) not advertized in the edit toolbar (fortunately!) and (2) only used rarely on most sites (if at all).
Jun 5, 2020 at 6:33 comment added Meta Andrew T. @Robotnik possibly outdated and not complete (no list for spoiler block), but What site-specific post formatting settings are available?
Jun 5, 2020 at 6:28 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod @Sean here's an interactive example that might answer your question.
Jun 4, 2020 at 20:03 comment added Vikki @HamVocke: I meant more "what to use in the blank line separating two blockquotes with different nesting levels" - does the separating line take the number of arrows of the parent blockquote, or of the blockquote nested within?
Jun 4, 2020 at 19:48 review Suggested edits
Jun 4, 2020 at 20:01
Jun 4, 2020 at 18:34 comment added Wilf Would it be possible to have Tab characters in code blocks etc? This is important for some languages.
Jun 4, 2020 at 15:32 answer added Christian Rau timeline score: 5
Jun 4, 2020 at 15:25 history edited Benjamin HodgsonStaffMod CC BY-SA 4.0
minor grammar fix
Jun 4, 2020 at 6:35 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod @Sean You can nest blockquotes pretty much the same way you nested them before. Instead of using > you'd start each line of a nested blockquote with >> (or more characters if you want to nest even deeper).
Jun 4, 2020 at 4:05 answer added KorvinStarmast timeline score: 15
Jun 4, 2020 at 0:47 answer added 1201ProgramAlarm timeline score: 4
Jun 3, 2020 at 21:20 comment added Vikki How will the changes in blockquote syntax interact with nested blockquotes (for instance, me asking a question quoting an NTSB report quoting someone else)?
Jun 3, 2020 at 20:56 answer added pkamb timeline score: 28
Jun 3, 2020 at 19:52 comment added Fabian Röling For anyone who wants tables, you can use this tool for now: marklodato.github.io/js-boxdrawing It lets you easily draw vertical and horizontal lines, intersections of those and so on with Unicode box drawing characters.
Jun 3, 2020 at 14:03 answer added GlorfindelMod timeline score: 12
Jun 3, 2020 at 13:56 answer added GlorfindelMod timeline score: 14
Jun 3, 2020 at 6:30 comment added Glen_b Please consider adding to your FAQ questions above "How do I download all my posts as they are right now?" for those people concerned that many of their site-specific answers might break. (likely a link to an answer elsewhere on site would do for an answer to that question) --- [While I think this is broadly a very good thing, a few more days of warning might have been handy]
Jun 3, 2020 at 4:31 answer added tbodt timeline score: 4
Jun 3, 2020 at 4:00 comment added S.S. Anne at least it gets rid of the edits where all people do is change the formatting style.
Jun 2, 2020 at 23:59 comment added Robotnik I just learned that YouTube embedding and spoilers are considered 'extra features'. Could it be possible (eventually, not as part of this change) to get a Mod page which lists all currently enabled vs available features for their site in question?
Jun 2, 2020 at 23:09 comment added Craig Estey Will ctrl-k still work the same for both inlines and code blocks?
Jun 2, 2020 at 21:05 comment added matt This is good, in my opinion. It is absolutely true that Markdown is an incomplete spec, and some solid flavor needs to be used instead. My peronal favorite happens to be kramdown, but it's not a good choice to substitute for standard Markdown in most contexts. CommonMark sounds like a good selection.
Jun 2, 2020 at 20:47 comment added TylerH Lost me at the code highlighting changes. Not a fan of code fences :-(
Jun 2, 2020 at 15:31 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod Because we can't reasonably support two different active markdown renderers without tripping eventually. There are good reasons to move forward outlined in the post - compatibility, user experience, ease of maintenance, simpler future feature development being some of them.
Jun 2, 2020 at 14:51 comment added Basj If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Why changing the Markdown parser for millions of past questions?
Jun 2, 2020 at 14:51 comment added Basj @PM2Ring Yes in this case it's easy, but for more complex cases, there could be minor bugs / corner cases here and there... Format conversion always introduces some sort of quirks...
Jun 2, 2020 at 13:55 comment added PM 2Ring @Basj Simple things like #Header to # Header will be converted automatically.
Jun 2, 2020 at 13:09 comment added Basj TL;DR: does this mean questions/answers written 1 or 5 years ago could be parsed differently in a few weeks, and the layout might be broken for old posts? Example: what happens to previous posts with #Header instead of # Header?
Jun 2, 2020 at 11:52 comment added O. R. Mapper What about placeholders of the form [...], such as tag ([tag:discussion] for discussion) or site reference ([scifi.se] for Science Fiction & Fantasy)? Are those just modelled as links whose definition is invisible at the time of writing?
Jun 2, 2020 at 11:49 comment added Ian Kemp - SE killed by LLMs Tables ASAP, PLEASE!
Jun 2, 2020 at 10:44 comment added PM 2Ring @Mast Huh? If the displayed text of a post would get altered by the new Markdown engines, then its Markdown will not be updated, even if the difference is a single whitespace. It will continue to be displayed via its current HTML, which was created by the old Markdown engine. So its appearance will be unaltered. However, when someone attempts to edit such a post they will have to comply with the new Markdown rules. This may cause problems. Eg, someone edits a post to fix some minor thing but then discovers that they need to make major changes so that the post renders correctly.
Jun 2, 2020 at 10:02 answer added GhostCat timeline score: 12
Jun 2, 2020 at 7:43 comment added Mast This is going to break a lot of old posts unintentionally, isn't it?
Jun 2, 2020 at 7:21 answer added Métoule timeline score: 27
Jun 2, 2020 at 5:41 comment added Criggie Hopefully this puts a stick in the wheel of the screen scrapers out there.
Jun 2, 2020 at 3:17 answer added Eliah Kagan timeline score: 34
Jun 1, 2020 at 21:31 answer added StephenG - Help Ukraine timeline score: 20
Jun 1, 2020 at 21:24 comment added Martin Bean TL;DR. Is the reason for switch really that nuanced it needs a post that long?
Jun 1, 2020 at 20:07 comment added dbc Hmm, I use multiple levels of nested list and blockquote, possibly containing code, a lot. What sort of changes will be required for, say, this post or this one or this one? Will I get a notification if/when you automatically edit it, so I can check whether the post is still readable?
Jun 1, 2020 at 18:55 comment added Paulo Cereda Oh boy, here we go again...
Jun 1, 2020 at 18:45 comment added This_is_NOT_a_forum What about code in lists (both use(d) indentation)? E.g. 8 spaces (or a minimum of 5 until now?) indent for code at the first level in a list. I presume they are independent of each other, with indent for a list taking precedence (and code fencing to be used for the code), but perhaps address it explicitly in the question?
Jun 1, 2020 at 18:40 comment added User that hates AI Does this apply to user profiles, too?
Jun 1, 2020 at 18:39 comment added user20416 What about RTL direction, currently unsupported by CommonMark?
Jun 1, 2020 at 18:17 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod I run the markdown through the old renderer, run the markdown through the new renderer, scrub both HTML versions with good ol' regular expressions and compare the two HTML strings. It's not sophisticated but gets the job done just fine and is fast enough to handle millions of posts in my lifetime. I hope to get a blog post out soon where I can share more insights.
Jun 1, 2020 at 17:53 comment added HeyJude If a post looks different using the new renderer (and if it’s just one whitespace off) we won’t automatically re-render the post - I'm just curious to know what tool do you use to determine whether a post renders differently?
Jun 1, 2020 at 17:35 answer added janw timeline score: 23
Jun 1, 2020 at 17:24 answer added 1201ProgramAlarm timeline score: 35
Jun 1, 2020 at 16:18 comment added Ganesh Sittampalam @ShadowKeepsSocialDistance If I understood this post correctly, the rendered HTML is saved in the database along with the source markup for each post.
Jun 1, 2020 at 13:06 answer added DavidG timeline score: 7
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:52 history edited Wrzlprmft CC BY-SA 4.0
Formatting. If the philosophy is to separate formatting marks by spaces (which is good), we should also champion this for code fences.
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:34 comment added user152859 @Laurel the apps likely don't render the HTML themselves, but rather it's done in the API level. If that's the case, apps won't need any change. But if the render is done in the app itself.... this is essentially the final straw and they'll have to shut them down. Waiting for official response.
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:27 answer added reneMod timeline score: 54
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:22 comment added Laurel Will the apps continue to work properly with rendering previews/posts?
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:22 answer added Christian Rau timeline score: 19
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:16 answer added Christian Rau timeline score: 7
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:15 answer added GlorfindelMod timeline score: 133
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:08 answer added Ham VockeStaffMod timeline score: 107
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:05 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod This migration won't enable header IDs. This migration is already a big thing so we don't want to conflate adding new features with running the migration itself. Both, markdown-it and markdig support header IDs via plugins so implementing this feature will now be easier than before - but it remains a different discussion.
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:00 comment added Nick is tired @ZoeTheLockdownPrincess "You can still use indented code blocks but can’t declare the preferred language explicitly moving forward."
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:59 comment added Zoe - Save the data dump Also, regular space-indented blocks will still work, right? Notably r-markdown kinda relies on space-based intentation to display the code itself
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:59 history edited terdon CC BY-SA 4.0
Included the code fence so the language selection can be visible since the paragraph is explaining that feature
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:59 comment added Ham Vocke StaffMod Spoiler syntax is going to remain the same - although it's not part of the CommonMark specification.
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:56 comment added Zoe - Save the data dump Does this also mean we're getting header IDs?
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:56 history edited ThiefMaster CC BY-SA 4.0
fix quotes in code examples
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:55 answer added Mithical timeline score: 34
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:54 comment added Culver Kwan Then would the syntax of spoiler be changed?
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:53 history edited JNatStaffMod
edited tags
Jun 1, 2020 at 11:51 history asked Ham VockeStaffMod CC BY-SA 4.0