Stripped Down CKEditor Vs Markdown - wysiwyg

Question

I have been looking into why WYSIWYG editors are bad for content creation. The most common reason given is that they output incorrect html. But what if I use editors with reduced functionality?
My requirements are only the ability to italicize, make text bold, create ordered/unordered lists and (maybe at a later date) add inline images.
My users will hopefully be 'persistent' users (small numbers of laypersons using the app frequently)
In this context how do I choose between Markdown (WMD editor) & a stripped down WYSIWYG editor. How would page performance be affected with each? I consider fidelity & reproduciblity of data to be important.

Answer 1

You choose by considering your audience. Wiki markup and markdown is for geeks. Your customers sound like they're probably not geeks so I would suggest CKEditor or Twiki-style editor (good, simple Wysiwyg UI) for non-geek users.
Basic concern: Why force lay-people to learn a markup language when solid alternatives exist?
See the Custom Toolbar editor in this CKEditor demo. Or check out TinyMCE.

Answer 2

OK, I tested both.
Even for my basic formatting requirements, CKEditor generated quite ghastly html
Now this is the input
This actually appears to be better
I hope users understand what we are doing
Lets see
But in the meantime
CKEditor Output
<p> This actually appears to be better</p>
<p> I hope users understand what we are doing</p>
<p> Lets see</p>
<p> </p>
<p> But in the meantime</p>
And Markdown Output
<p>This actually appears to be better <br>
I hope users understand what we are doing <br>
Lets see</p>
<p>But in the meantime</p>
Now if this is the difference between these two for the most basic formatting (linebreaks and paragraphs), what will it be like in a 200 word submission. I think most users will need to know only this
For line breaks, two SPACES and hit ENTER.
For new paragraphs, hit ENTER twice
The rest of the stuff could be learnt incrementally
Is it that hard to engineer a 'basic' WYSIWYG editor?
EDIT
After adding these to config.js above problem is solved
config.enterMode = CKEDITOR.ENTER_BR;
config.shiftEnterMode = CKEDITOR.ENTER_P;