alt Hacker NewsIf agents can generate text so easily, why would they be limited to Markdown instead of reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, or LaTeX which have rich features that help users understand text? I can understand developers refusing to adopt proper formats for documentation, but this seems odd for the bots. It doesn’t even generate the correct syntax block in Markdown using “bash” instead of “sh-session”.
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simonw • yesterday at 7:14 PM
Markdown has the widest tool compatibility - GitHub renders it, so does VS Code and many other editors and file hosts.
I didn't know about sh-session, is that documented anywhere?
giancarlostoro • yesterday at 7:07 PM
I think its primarily because that is the most common formatting in every editor now? I could be wrong. Markdown has become the standard for README files for over a decade now.
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I dunno. I’ve written a bit of LaTeX but does it really shine in this context? IMO the real advantage it has is that it can allow the user to express more complicated intents than Markdown (weird phrasing—my natural instinct was to call LaTeX more precise than Markdown, but Markdown is pretty precise for describing the type of file that it is good at…).
Anyway LLMs don’t have underlying intent so maybe it is fine to just let them express what they can in Markdown?