Picture"Kiran Rao", "url"=>"https://kiranrao.in"}.">

Hi, I'm {"name"=>"Kiran Rao", "url"=>"https://kiranrao.in"}.

Android Developer. Tech enthusiast. Serial dabbler.

Curious Techizen

Mark It Down

Then:

My traditional workflow for writing a blog post used to be this:
  1. Type it out offline in a Word Processor (MS Word, Open Office, Lotus Symphony, Libre Office - what have you).
  2. When the post is ready, first copy-paste it into Google Docs.
  3. Then, create a new post in Blogger, and paste in the contents.
  4. Often, several formatting "adjustments" would be needed (let me not even go into the details of these adjustments!)
  5. Finally, publish the post.
The idea was to have a copy of the document outside of blogger (in case I decide to switch hosting platforms etc). The Google Docs step was in order to have a cloud copy of the "copy outside Blogger". Yes, go ahead. Throw back your head and laugh out loud at the stupidity of it all. I deserve it :-)

But, let's face it: Word Processors are not meant for producing content for the web.
  • Copy-pasting from a Word Processor document into any post editor invariably messes up the formatting.
  • Then there's the issue of things like line-spacing and "Justify" settings in word processors - these do not translate to HTML in a standard way.
  • Finally, stuff like quoting passages of text; or inserting in-line pre-formatted code is mighty difficult to get right while using a combination of Word Processors and post editors.

 

Now:

In order to get past all these problems, I have now turned to Markdown syntax. As you can see, markdown is a simple syntax for formatting web content (headers, paras, bullet points, quotes, code etc). The advantages of Markdown for me are:
  • Simple, familiar(?) syntax. (If you have used StackOverflow, you have already used Markdown)
  • Produces HTML as output.
  • Implemented in a standard way across Markdown Editors.
  • Especially convenient for use cases like this technical blog that you are reading, where I will need to include lots of inline code snippets and the like.

My new workflow for publishing a post is:
  1. Write the post in a Markdown Editor. I use ReText, but there are dozens of them out there, for every platform, and even web-based ones.
  2. Export it as HTML.
  3. Make minor changes in the HTML if required. For example, I use google code prettify for syntax highlighting. This requires HTML code elements to have specific CSS styles associated with them.
  4. Copy the final HTML into the HTML editor of Blogger.
  5. Publish it (actually, I schedule my posts rather than publish them right away - because I wrote several posts at a time and then space them out. But that's a different topic).

I suppose some of these steps can further be eliminated - for example:
  • Some blogging platforms already allow Markdown directly in their post editors.
  • If and when Blogger allows Markdown directly in the post editor, I can skip the HTML exporting part.
  • That part about adding specific CSS classes to the code elements - that can probably be automated with Javascript.

What we have at the end of the day is a simple, predictable and no-fuss workflow for writing blog posts which are not only well-formatted, but are also interleaved with quotes and code blocks; all this without breaking HTML.

 

Customize:

You might have observed that Markdown (or rather the HTML output of Markdown) only defines the structure of the content, and not the style. What this means is that you can customize the look of the HTML procuded by Markdown, by suppying appropriate CSS styles. Note that this is consistent with the best practices of web development:
Separate structure from presentation.
This is exactly what Markdown does: Defines the semantic structure, but leaves the presentation to the CSS.

 

Cons:

I have been a big fan of 1.5 line spacing and the "Justify" feature of Word Processors. It looks like these formatting features are unavailable in Markdown (probably because they do not translate to HTML in a standard way). But on second thoughts, this probably is a good thing - since including line spacing and Justification would pollute the structure with presentation!

 

Conclusion:

I've adopted Markdown for not only my blogging needs, but for much more (writing documentation, for example). It works pretty well, is hassle-free and is simple. Do let me know what tools you use and the workflow you follow for content creation and publishing.
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