this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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This is the way.
Almost completely pure way of storing ideas. With this I mean that you don't store unnecessary data such as "background should be white" or "left page margin is 1.3cm". It's just text. What's important is what it says + minimal markup.
Presentation is left to the reader's client. Do you want dark mode? Get a markdown editor/reader that supports it. Do you want serif font? Again, that's client's choice and not part of the document.
I wish browsers would support markdown out of the box, so you could open https://example.com/some-post.md
Old fart warning!
I remember when that is how the web worked. All that markup was to define the structure of the document and the client rendered it as set by the user.
Some clients were better than others. My favourite was the default browser in OS/2 Warp, which allowed me to easily set the display characteristics of every tag. The end result was that every site looked (approximately) the same, which made browsing so much nicer, in my opinion.
Then someone decided that website creation should be part of the desktop publishing class (at least at the school I taught at). The world (wide web) has never recovered.
We're kinda getting it back with the Accessibility tree
In theory, if the page is compiled right, you can read everything right from there. You could also interact with it.
Thanks. This is the first I've heard of the Accessibility tree. A quick look kind of spooked me, but I'll dig deeper.
Looks kind of simple to me at first glance...
There are four properties in an accessibility tree object:
name
How can we refer to this thing? For instance, a link with the text "Read more" will have "Read more" as its name (find more on how names are computed in the Accessible Name and Description Computation spec).
description
How do we describe this thing, if we want to provide more description beyond the name? The description of a table could explain what kind of information the table contains.
role
What kind of thing is it? For example, is it a button, a nav bar, or a list of items?
state
Does it have a state? Examples include checked or unchecked checkbox states and collapsed or expanded states for the element.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Accessibility_tree
Well, it has been a decade since I've done anything other than dig holes (literally), drive school buses, and work in my shop. :)
Thanks for the jump start. I'll add this to my ever growing list of tech stuff I'd like to tackle in my retirement.
You can use Dev Tools to see a page's full accessibility tree:
Chrome: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/full-accessibility-tree/#full-accessibility-tree-in-devtools
Firefox: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/accessibility_inspector/#features-of-the-accessibility-panel
I haven't really looked for anything that will present that to you as an Add-On/Extension but it's theoretically possible.
Ok, thanks! That looks like a good start for me.
We're getting closer to winter. I've got most of those preparations done. "Just" have to finish building the heater for my shop. My programming based project list is coming together: learn me some Rust, contribute some documentation to a project I'm following, look deeper into the potential of the Accessibility tree. That should keep me busy for a while!
It's a simple and elegant way of covering 95% of document structuring needs, while being as close to readable plaintext as possible.
The vast majority of documents currently written in MS-word could just be markdown. The vast majority of web content could just be markdown. This would save the modern world petabytes of XML bloat.
If you need something fancier, either use a vector format or do fancy client-side styling.