Speculation on rules for Humane HTML

I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with markup languages that try to make inputting formatted text on the web easier. I had long tried to incorporate Markdown in most of my projects but lately I find it not much easier than straight HTML. So I began thinking about what would constitute “Humane HTML” text input. I began with some research and went from there.

• Humane Text Formats - Suggest Markdown as the best format.
• Why Doesnt Wiki Do Html - Reasons to avoid HTML
• Humane Text Formats - Gives reasons to stick with HTML.
• Is HTML a Humane Markup Language?

So I started thinking about what would make people’s lives easier if they had to enter HTML.

• Automatic p and/or br tags - these can be inferred easily enough from the content though existing tags must be honored and not replicated.
• Automatic url and email links - turn link looking text into hyperlinks.
• Optional nice text formatting - like smartypants and textile do.
• Easy lists - This could be done with either the Textile or Markdown system (or both)

So what’s nice about these rules:

• They require less text to input.
• They fall back gracefully if interpreted as pure HTML.