Generations of text formats

In 1985, on a practice week in  some company downtown Bergen, I was lucky to get a course in Text editing software on Wang Computers.  Extensive use of function keys.  Very advanced functions, word-splitting, etc.  No font to select, very easy that way.

In 1991, while visiting ABB in Heidelberg, Germany, as a student on a job acquired through IAESTE, I met my first text file format, the NROFF unix manual typesetting language.

In 1992, I tried gopher hyperlink navigation.

In 1993, the World Wide Web started for me, authoring web pages.  Setting up a web server.

In 1997, while starting work on master thesis, I learned LaTeX.  \bold{text}.  Very powerful.  Even math equations.  Difficult with images.  Much more powerful than MS-Word.  Many templates available, for different end-results.  Each journal had their own format standards.

Sometime 2000, a colleague looked into DocBook. 

Also 2000s, I used Trac wiki and its syntax.

Sometime 2010, I stumbled across Asciidoc.

In 2016, I got onto GitLab, later Github, and found Markdown syntax.

On 1. jan 2023, I sourced back to Asciidoc and began to think:  We just need one source code, from which we can compile, produce all other formats.  Which one is the best?


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