It’s not exactly Emacs vs. vi, but the two styles of linking in Markdown, reference and inline, have their adherents, and each makes their case.

And now it’s all this

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Style Pass
2021-05-30 02:30:07

It’s not exactly Emacs vs. vi, but the two styles of linking in Markdown, reference and inline, have their adherents, and each makes their case. In the reference corner, John Gruber:

But when I’m writing, pasting in URLs as I’m typing not only matches the way it’s done in HTML, it also allows me to keep my writing flow as much as possible. I type the text, I paste the link, and I keep writing. Naming a link, moving down, adding a link line, and then returning up to where I was—it breaks the flow.

Both are correct. Reference links are more readable1, but they take more time to write—at least if you’re writing in a dumb editor. When I make a Markdown link in an online forum, like the Automators forum, I always use inline links because I’m writing in an HTML text field, which is the dumbest of text editors.

But when I’m writing a blog post, I’m doing it in BBEdit, which has an AppleScript dictionary that can handle all of the cursor movement and pasting that Jason (rightly) dislikes. I don’t waste time or lose my train of thought in a lot of mousing around.

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