Medium’s New API

MarsEdit developer Daniel Jalkut on Medium’s new API, and its support for Markdown:

Unfortunately, the Markdown support through the API seems to be a one-time conversion from Markdown to HTML, at the time of submission. This means users can write in Markdown for the initial composition of a post, but any further edits (through the web interface only, see above) will need to be done using Medium’s default rich WYSIWYG editor.

A more attractive long-term solution for Markdown fans would be to support storing Markdown text literally in Medium’s database, and converting it to HTML only for presentation on the web. This leaves the pristine Markdown available for perpetual edits either moments or years after the post is first published. This would require updating the web interface to support editing content as plain text, but would be a welcome change for anybody who favors editing in Markdown.

★ Friday, 9 October 2015