Over the past couple of days I set up and launched this blog, and started moving over some articles I’d written on my WeChat official account along with various notes I’d written day to day. The experience has been very good.
First, using Markdown turns articles into code at low cost and high quality
Technically speaking, Markdown is just another markup language alongside XML, HTML and the rest. But Markdown’s markup is so concise that not only does it give the article styling, the source barely interferes with reading either.
Unlike XML and HTML, Markdown’s markup is entirely symbols — there are no tag names or attribute names, so there’s nothing to blend in with the original text and become hard to tell apart.
That advantage, more than its other virtue of “concise, less to write,” is what makes it so hard to put down.
Then, using Git gives articles centralized, versioned management
In the past, some of my articles sat in the phone’s built-in notes app (convenient for syncing across devices).
But the built-in notes app is fairly weak, so third-party note-taking apps were needed as well.
Also, for nicer styling, I was still using Smartisan Notes (锤子便签).
This led to articles being saved in inconsistent places.
Putting all the articles in a Git repository removes that problem completely.
What’s more, Git records the time, reason and content of every change, and it’s easy to view historical versions. For Git, which does source code management, that’s effortless, but for other notes apps it’s simply unimaginable.
Finally, combined with Jekyll, articles are stored more orderly and displayed more beautifully
Jekyll can convert Markdown files into static pages. Compared with Markdown’s “content + formatting,” it adds “styling” to the article.
If rendered Markdown is black and white, then the converted HTML page of a post is in colour — just as you’re seeing right now.
Also, by convention, the post’s filename has to include the date the article was written, and the content has to be filled in with the author, category, keywords and other information.
This process is also a process of indexing the content, which helps with organizing articles and finding them later.
I’m writing this article to express my admiration.