Thinking about file-name suffixes too much

Should we be using shorter file-name suffixes for the source files and templates in Mismiy?

.markdown → .md

In the earlier iterations of Mismiy, we used .markdown for the source files. This has the advantage of being very unambiguous, but is inconsistent with the common use of .md in names like README.md.

Strictly speaking, our files contain Markdown prefixed with metadata in YAML, rather than just Markdown. But we will follow the lead of Jekyll (and other static site generators) and use .md nevertheless.

In the Mismiy code we have (for now) arranged that any mixture of .md and .markdown files will work.

Shaving off the .mustache

The templates used for layouts and partial pages use Mustache format and at present an HTML template will be named something like post.html.mustache. I’ve seen suggestions for shorter suffixes (like .stach or .mu), but there is an even shorter alternative: no suffix. The post template would be named post.html, and only the fact the file is in the templates directory tells us it is a template rather than a finished document.

The biggest advantage of the no-suffix approach is probably that it makes editors with syntax highlighting highlight the HTML tags rather than the Mustache tags.

The code changes are trivial, so long as we do not mind imposing a requirement on existing users (if there are any) renaming their templates.