Markdown Processors: Surprisingly Bad

The modern wiki software shipped by Gitlab and Github assumes that everyone writes their docs just for the platform, and the project will never need to leave. Their strange syntax means nobody can just use the regular markdown notes they might have, either for their own purposes or from another Git project.

Gitlab's wiki uses Gollum, which insists that links look like this:

1Golum is an awful wiki.  See my [review here](/wikis/golum_review/).

But while you're writing the file wikis/overview.md, then the natural way to link to wikis/golum_review.md should be a link to that file:

1Golum is an awful wiki.  See my [review here](golum_review.md).

The link to another markdown file should say where that markdown file is. The linking system here clearly thinks in terms of a website address rather than linked notes.

The Gitea wiki has no such limit, but somehow manages to find a worse one: it cannot show files inside a directory and they don't plan to change that limitation. This basic directory structure is impossible:

writing/
├── ed.md
├── emacs.md
├── ghostwriter.md
├── helix.md
└── vim.md
wikis/
├── gitea.md
├── golum.md
├── links.md
└── vim.md

Instead, everything must remain in the root directory. People have raised this as an issue, and the Gitea devs closed it, so now all the wikis have this structure:

├── ed.md
├── emacs.md
├── helix.md
├── ghostwriter.md
├── gitea.md
├── golum.md
├── links.md
├── vim.md
└── vim_2.md

Worst of all, both Gitea and Gollum suffer from a GUI which demands that spaces are represented with hyphens.

It's a shite state of affairs and somehow markdown apps are no better.

PS: A look at the MkDocs project suggests at least one wiki can handle plain markdown. I've not tried it, but it looks promising.