Strangely, Markdown is a markup “language” and was created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. The idea is to allow anyone to generate plain text and have that text re-formatted into valid HTML giving it some structure. The basics are very simple to learn and allow anyone applying this technique to add emphasis and style to their words in a very simple manner.
We thought it would be a great idea to allow members of the Sea Kayak Wales web site to post comments using markdown. We encourage our users to comment and discuss items posted to the news page (a social bookmarking facility for sea kayakers). Anyone can just enter their comments as plain text and that is (more or less) how they will be displayed.
Keen observers might note that when a web URL is entered then it is automatically converted into a link to that URL. They might also notice that some attempt is made to organise what is entered into paragraphs and that whitespace is often trimmed. This is all done by the Markdown processing supporting the discussion pages.
Markdown can be used to emphasise text. Putting an asterisk before and after a piece of text will have it rendered in italics [ *display in italics* ].
Put two asterisks before and after a section of text and it will appear bold [ **this will be bold** ].
Lists can be displayed in a “bulleted” format using this markdown:
* List Item 1
*List Item 2
* List Item 3 etc
Headings can be denoted with hashes or in a more literal manner:
### A Level 3 Heading
or
A level two Heading
--------------------------
Full details of Markdown can be found in the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) or on the Daring Fireball web site (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics)
Have fun but please don’t overdo it.
We thought it would be a great idea to allow members of the Sea Kayak Wales web site to post comments using markdown. We encourage our users to comment and discuss items posted to the news page (a social bookmarking facility for sea kayakers). Anyone can just enter their comments as plain text and that is (more or less) how they will be displayed.
Keen observers might note that when a web URL is entered then it is automatically converted into a link to that URL. They might also notice that some attempt is made to organise what is entered into paragraphs and that whitespace is often trimmed. This is all done by the Markdown processing supporting the discussion pages.
Markdown can be used to emphasise text. Putting an asterisk before and after a piece of text will have it rendered in italics [ *display in italics* ].
Put two asterisks before and after a section of text and it will appear bold [ **this will be bold** ].
Lists can be displayed in a “bulleted” format using this markdown:
* List Item 1
*List Item 2
* List Item 3 etc
Headings can be denoted with hashes or in a more literal manner:
### A Level 3 Heading
or
A level two Heading
--------------------------
Full details of Markdown can be found in the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) or on the Daring Fireball web site (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics)
Have fun but please don’t overdo it.
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