I have been sent word documents that I’ve been totally unable to read.
I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I haven’t been able to read.
I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I’m not able to easily edit. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I’ve been unable to edit.
For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular because plain text works everywhere.
I’m not convinced that markdown is the ultimate format, but it has more good properties than most other available formats.
But "looks correct" for PDF presumes a certain form factor of the device used, because of the fixed page size. PDFs are a pain on many e-readers because they are laid out for US letter or A4 at a certain resolution. On a smaller device I often find I have a choice of either a. seeing an entire page at one time, as intended, but needing a magnifier to read anything, or b. zooming in to be able to read the text comfortably but then having to scroll left/right/up/down to read. There's no option in PDF to reflow the text to fit the resolution and size of the device. I'm not much of a fan of epub but at least the text reflow allows for normal reading.
Also, exporting text from a PDF to import to anything else is trying at best.
I agree with you, markdown is far better than what you’ve described.
It’s an interesting thing to consider. How do we get somewhere sane between markdown and say HTML for example? What would that look like? Can you get the ease of markdown with something that would let us do more too?
I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I haven’t been able to read.
I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I’m not able to easily edit. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I’ve been unable to edit.
For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular because plain text works everywhere.
I’m not convinced that markdown is the ultimate format, but it has more good properties than most other available formats.