Markdown is a markup language with plain text formatting syntax.
It can be converted to HTML and many other formats.
Markdown is often used to:
- format readme files
- write messages
- create rich text using a text editor.
Used by:
- GitHub
- StackOverflow
- Gitter
- Slack
- Gitlab
- Bitbucket
- README in any project.
Year: 2004 Designer: John Gruber Developer: Aaron Swartz
The main goal:
“to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format.”
The key design goal is readability. Markdown is readable as-is.
Its main inspiration a conventions for marking up plain text in email.
Gruber wrote a Perl script:
Markdown.pl.
There is no clearly defined Markdown standard.
This has led to fragmentation.
Gruber said that complete standardisation is a mistake:
“Anyone has different needs. No one syntax would make all happy.” — John Gruber
From 2012, a standardization process has started.
In September 2014, Gruber objected to the usage of Markdown name.
It was rebranded as a new dialect named CommonMark.
Announce a finalized 1.0 spec in 2017.
In 2017 GitHub released a formal specification of Github Flavored Markdown.
It follows the CommonMark spec.
Implementations of Markdown are available for a dozen of programming languages.
For example, Markdown plugins exist for every major blogging platform.
Denys Dovhan @denysdovhan