[Distutils] Basic Markdown Readme Support

[Nick Coghlan]

On 3 May 2016 at 14:33, Alexander Walters <tritium-list at sdamon.com> wrote:
> The justification was "Because Github et. al. support markdown, pypi should
> too", presumably for the purpose of allowing one to write their README once,
> and have it work in both places.  This is already possible, and only adds
> unneeded complexity to an already complex system.  If you want to make your
> README a write-once document, use the format already supported on both
> platforms.

As I understand it, it's more a matter of folks finding the context
switch between Markdown and non-Sphinx reStructuredText a pain (with
the main differences being double-backticks for inline code and `link
text <link target>`_ instead of [link text](link target) for
hyperlinks) and not being aware of (or caring about) the dire lack of
commercial investment in tooling support for upstream Python software
distribution (since all the redistributors have their own software
distribution platforms that they recommend their users use instead).

Encountering volunteer maintained community services can be quite a
shock to the system for folks otherwise used to software tooling
developed by venture capital backed companies making a landgrab for
developer mindshare in the hopes of creating the next Oracle or
Microsoft :)

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia