Using BBCode
Probably one of the best methods for short peices of.

I plan on hopefully finding a use for BBCode by using it to write shorter essays, long-ish pieces of writing, and typed out exam questions that may not require advanced use of tables, mathematics symbols, and special features like citations.

The reason for this is that for a document of which the primary consumption is visual, something like a title becomes just 'big text at start'. I don't need all the navigational functions that Org-mode offers for moving around headlines, because headlines aren't really used in the same way. Hopefully, this could reduce the reliance on Emacs and Org-mode features for, while I could indeed write an org file in Windows' Notepad, and although that would be far more enjoyable than writing a DocBook file in Notepad, I would never do either willingly. I feel BBCode would not be so bad.

I would feel uneasy comparing BBCode to Org-mode or AsciiDoc, as their use cases are different. Org-mode and AsciiDoc are both meant to make writing large complex documents easy and more fun than writing in heavy markups, while retaining the power offered by heavier markups and perhaps adding tools for specific end-users.

AsciiDoc is also primarily aimed at producing DocBook files. For this reason it has a rich feature-set for this task, having one-to-one compatibility with DocBook (a famously tag-heavy XML language) syntax (every element is accounted for, also known 'semantically equivalent'). The reason that AsciiDoc exists is that the author felt he was spending far too much time writing tags and not content.

Org-mode markup has hundreds of features, like support for code blocks, nested headlines, to-do lists, etc. The power of Org-mode comes not just from it's syntax, but from its integration with Emacs. This allows editing to be fast and enjoyable (if you like Emacs). Org-mode has specialist features more suited to certain uses. For example, Org-mode has tools to auto-generate a sitemap for a web-site, something that I use for this site.

BBCode on the other hand, is not really designed to make documents, but to add basic tag-oriented formatting to text for things like blog posts and forum questions and comments, without risking exploitation of using a markup that allows scripting. There is no implicit document structure, it just outputs some HTML.

BBCode's lack of <p> tags makes it easy to write. Theoretically, you could write a .bbcode file without typing a single tag. This gives BBCode a nice uncluttered look, one that makes it far easier to spot tagging mistakes compared to HTML.

Tags are a great type of markup for newcomers who are trying to read a source file. Tags are often self-explanatory and give hints about what they do. I feel that few people would ask what a <code> tag indicates. Furthermore, everyone uses brackets and some may nest them already; the tagging style of [start][/end] seems familiar

Compare all this to a .docx document. When viewed, MS Word hides the markup from the viewer to improve readability, at the cost of compatibility (you may only use a compatible word processor). The markup is complex and still appears in the file, it is just hidden. This is often referred to as 'what you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) editing. Open a .docx file in a text editor and imagine trying to edit it by hand.

This is more of a lightweight markup feature, but is especially apparent in BBCode.

Learning the BBCode syntax in it's entirety takes perhaps 5 minutes; less if you have even a basic understanding of HTML. This makes it fast for newcomers to understand. BBCode doesn't really require a 'cheat sheet' on hand to help out.

Lightweight markups differ from other markups in that they require little 'pre-writing'. For example, when one starts using LaTeX, there are several elements that the author needs to define before starting to produce the content of the document. In contrast, R Markdown exports to LaTeX well (they are both used for scientific papers), but requires no definitions.

Similarly, BBCode has no metadata, it being such a simple language. It is only designed for relatively short pieces, and as such does not need to handle document features like page size.

Writing tags for every single element gets annoying and feels slow. I greatly dislike writing raw HTML, one main reason being that I don't like that I feel like I spend too much time writing <p></p>.

This is but a non-issue with nowadays' cheap storage, but the lack of inherent document structure and small amount of tagging and metadata means that BBCode (and other minimal markups) have smaller- files. This combined with text editors usually being much smaller programs results in larger writing like books being easier to move around and be editable on a larger range of devices.

"However", you may say, "my word processor means that I can produce a nice looking document and I have never typed a tag in my life!". True, that may be, but BBCode works in your favourite editor. Docx is WYSIWYG and relies on the behaviour of the word processor to edit and view correctly. I cannot afford a Microsoft Office license and besides, MS doesn't offer it for Linux. LibreOffice tries its best to support .docx, but it cannot guarantee compatibility, meaning seemingly fine documents might break at will.

Many of my schoolmates have incidents of writing a document at home that then will un-fix-ably display improperly upon trying to edit it in a slightly different version of Word. Note that this is because WYSIWYG dictates that the document be edited in the same manner that the viewer will see it; there is no way to dip into the source and tweak some things around.

Fundamentally, BBCode is just plain text. Perhaps in 10 years time, BBCode will be dead (though I hope not), and there will be no way to view the final document. However, if plain text editors are still around, I can open a .bbcode file without issue, view it, and edit it. Can the same be said for a 10 year-old Word document?

This is just my opinion, but BBCode blends together a good mix of tags (I like tags in theorem, just not a fusillade of angle-bracket tags) and plain old text. It is nice to look at, and feels a lot friendlier (apart from tables, read on).

This is a minor complaint and one that shared with most lightweight markups.

In my opinion, the one place that word processors shine is in their tables. Tables are column-based visual elements, whereas text is primarily line-based. Editing a table without such a visual reference can be difficult. No doubt it is not that difficult to get used to, I just need to put in the time. At least BBCode uses roughly the same syntax as what may well be the most common way that tables are stored for human consumption: HTML. See here a BBCode table.

[table]
[tr][th]Text[/th][th]Number[/th][/tr]
[tr][td]This[/td][td]1[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Is[/td][td]2[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]A[/td][td]3[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Table[/td][td]4[/td][/tr]
[/table]

In this category, Org-mode markup is by far the winner. It does rely on Emacs' ability to move text around automatically, but Org-mode justifies the table for you (columns are much easier to follow) and has some built in spreadsheet-like tools. It uses vertical bars for separators, which do their job well without much typing.

| Text  | Number |
|-------+--------|
| This  |      1 |
| Is    |      2 |
| A     |      3 |
| Table |      4 |

BBCode, despite being relatively prevalent for a minimal markup, does not have a dedicated exporter or parser program and has little widespread editor support. Some sites use a dedicated PHP (ugh) forum back-end that translates it into HTML for final viewing (along with other features for creating a full website).

The biggest downside for me is that Pandoc, a universal document converter that supports many lightweight and heavyweight markups has no support for BBCode. This is a shame because the simple nature of BBCode makes it a prime candidate for a converter. Having just checked the pandoc-discuss Google group, I see that there is a feature request for one, but from 2016.

That said, this is not really a problem unless you really need to convert BBCode often and offline. Otherwise, you may use one of the many online converters, or use a server back-end. Plus, it is readable to the point where you could probably just give them the source file in a pinch, and they would most likely understand what you mean.

To summarise,

BBCode won't (or rather shouldn't)

• Write your dissertation/thesis/large project requiring special formatting.
• Replace Word (though you should replace it, just not with this).
• Replace (R/Pandoc) Markdown/AsciiDoc/Org-mode/ReST.
• Make a fully-fledged website.
• Take an age to learn/get good at.
• Look impressive on a personal statement/CV.
• Give you a headache.
• Make you reach for an 80 page cheat-sheet every 10 seconds.

BBCode will

• Add some style to your writing.
• Make a good blog post.
• Make a short essay.
• Work on slow computers.
• Be workable in any text editor.

BBCode is

• Worth learning.