Markdown Improvements to Apple’s Developer Forums

The mononymous Quinn outlines his favorite new improvements to Apple’s Developer Forums, most of which are Markdown-related. I will admit that I find this satisfying. Here’s one:

The Markdown parser now supports out-of-line links. For example, you can ‘spell’ the previous link as:

link to the [Wikipedia > Service set (802.11 network)][refSs81n] page

[refSs81n]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_set_(802.11_network)>

Personally I prefer this style because I find that the long links get in my way while crafting my text.

I know inline links — [like this](http://example.com/) — are overwhelmingly more popular with Markdown users, but I personally much prefer the reference style for exactly the reason Quinn does. The inline style is easier, and I’d never argue against laziness as a virtue, but the reference style is just so much more readable.

★ Friday, 28 May 2021