Compare markdown or org mode

I use Emacs for years, and nowadays, I write a lot of files in org mode, such as notes, plans/conclusions or something else. However but most website support markdown-style instead of org-style. StackOverflow is an example. :)

Can someone tell me the exact difference between these two? Pros and cons? And which did you choose and why?

I think markdown and org derive from the different demands, while they coincidently have the similar markup syntax to edit plain text documents.

Markdown is only designed to easily read/write plain text. Refer to its philosophy:

> Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.

However, org is more complicated and it also has more features. You can use org for GTD, maintaining TODO lists, project plans etc. And the markup syntax seems just one accessory in the whole org system.

In my options, if only write some plain documents, you can choose anyone as you wish. However, if GTD or intend to export your plain documents for more formats (tex/pdf/docbook), you have to choose org.

I started out with markdown, but switched to org-mode after a few years of using markdown.

I think that Markdown is more readable than org-mode - especially if you don’t use Emacs. You have the special headings with underline while org-mode uses a line starting with #+title: as title and *, **, … for chapter/section/… headings. Also markdown links are [text](link) instead of [[link][text]] and footnotes are [^footnote] instead of [fn:footnote].

On the other hand, org-mode can do about everything you might want to do with a plain-text list - from planning your work and scheduling your writing time to including code-fragments which actually can get executed on export, so an exported document always contains the output of the latest version of the code automatically.

I switched to org-mode after starting to use it just for todo lists. Then I realized that I could also write nicely in it. And that the link syntax might be more complex than markdown, but C-c C-l generates it for me. And that exporting just works.

If you use emacs, I would definitely suggest org-mode.

I even write for my markdown-based website with org-mode, using the markdown-export, which for example adds support for convenient creation and editing of beautiful tables.

I love org-mode. But I do sometimes wonder if the definition of 'plain text' is stretched a little far? Particularly when you look at org files outside of emacs. You could say HTML is plain-text too...? Okay org's not so bad as that, but it's pretty illegible without CSH and folding. Markdown certainly is just as readable without CSH as it is with.

Other than that though, I prefer org-mode, and the ability to export from org to Markdown (or HTML, or PDF or ...) means that it's pretty well able to be consumed (read-only) all over the Web now, not just by Emacs people.

I prefer also org-mode's link style [[url][text]] as it mirrors HTML's <a href=url>text</a>; moin-moin's [[url|text]], and MediaWiki's [url text], whereas Markdown's syntax [text](url) is the wrong way around to my mind -- and I always end up getting this wrong when I use it! I suppose it's because in reStructured Text a link is written this way around too: `text <url>_` (and surrounded with backquotes, which are hard to do in Markdown code blocks, I am learning -- thanks for the Edit @Demi !)

I don't know much about markdown, but org-mode can really do a lot of things. You can write your report and export it to latex, you can write presentation using the beamer class. You can do literate programming with org-babel, you can use the agenda, use tags, manage tasks, ...

This video is a nice example of what you can do with org-mode.

Just adding an opinion that hasn't been mentioned: almost all of the benefits people have mentioned regarding org-mode have more to do with emacs than org-mode. All of the powerful features mentioned really have nothing to do org-mode as a plain text file format. You could build a program around markdown that gives you all the benefits you get with emacs + org-mode; there just isn't one.

The actual differences between the file format of org-mode and markdown are somewhat superficial (for example, the table format is almost identical between the two); there's clearly a big degree of experience + personal preference driving the discussion. But to the emacs+org-mode people: sell us on your tool, not the format (and don't conflate the two). If I can't get the benefits of org-mode without giving up the text-editing software I already enjoy using, then it's hardly useful to me in this discussion.

See here for an interesting discussion on this.