A Clean Start for the Web

I don't think everyone will like markdown or any html-free subsets of it. It'd be better to have a low level format for documents which could be a text or a binary format.

If I think about a text format, the first thing that comes up in my mind is something like Scribe or Texinfo.

Like this:

This is what you write...

        ---
        title = Title here
        ---
        # Heading here
        Blah **blah** _meh_ duh @haha.

which is transformed into something like this...

        @document[type=lwdml,version=1.1]
        @meta[
            generator="lwdml-md 0.2.7";
            time='iso8601#2021-12-31T23:57:34Z#';
            docversion=0.1;
        ]
        @title|Title here|
        @main
        @heading(Heading here)
        @start{text}
        Blah @bold(blah) @emph(meh) duh @@haha.
        @end{text}
        @eof.

...which is then served. This is at least human readable, clean and less repetation and clutter (than html (I think)).

In this system, you'd be writing in your favourite markup language (markdown, reST, ...) and compiling it to be served :).

I think it is helpful to split the application web into 2 distinct categories:

- server-side applications: documents with the option to add/change content via forms (think hacker news)

- client-side applications: full blown applications that can do just about anything and use the web as a platform and delivery system (think video conferencing or collaborative editing)

> There are lots of ways to do anything

This is a sign of a mature platform that develops but maintains backward compatibility.