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| author | Waylan Limberg <waylan@gmail.com> | 2009-06-15 21:48:55 -0400 |
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| committer | Waylan Limberg <waylan@gmail.com> | 2009-06-15 21:48:55 -0400 |
| commit | 43486f8575199cb43b4626d3bee20e826853bc03 (patch) | |
| tree | 9c958c46b3dda98eb45741049357b1e6f80aee93 /MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html | |
| parent | 79134ae972e1be97afcf7d4380cea41f3918ce9d (diff) | |
| download | markdown-43486f8575199cb43b4626d3bee20e826853bc03.tar.gz markdown-43486f8575199cb43b4626d3bee20e826853bc03.tar.bz2 markdown-43486f8575199cb43b4626d3bee20e826853bc03.zip | |
Moved perl's MarkdownTest test files into new testing framework. One 2004 test and 23 2007 tests are failing so I set them to be skipped for now. We'll have to explore those failures later. A few may be issues with normalization, but most appear to be edgecases with markdown.
Diffstat (limited to 'MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html | 942 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 942 deletions
diff --git a/MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html b/MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html deleted file mode 100644 index 5c01306..0000000 --- a/MarkdownTest/Tests_2007/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,942 +0,0 @@ -<h1>Markdown: Syntax</h1> - -<ul id="ProjectSubmenu"> - <li><a href="/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown Project Page">Main</a></li> - <li><a href="/projects/markdown/basics" title="Markdown Basics">Basics</a></li> - <li><a class="selected" title="Markdown Syntax Documentation">Syntax</a></li> - <li><a href="/projects/markdown/license" title="Pricing and License Information">License</a></li> - <li><a href="/projects/markdown/dingus" title="Online Markdown Web Form">Dingus</a></li> -</ul> - -<ul> -<li><a href="#overview">Overview</a> -<ul> -<li><a href="#philosophy">Philosophy</a></li> -<li><a href="#html">Inline HTML</a></li> -<li><a href="#autoescape">Automatic Escaping for Special Characters</a></li> -</ul></li> -<li><a href="#block">Block Elements</a> -<ul> -<li><a href="#p">Paragraphs and Line Breaks</a></li> -<li><a href="#header">Headers</a></li> -<li><a href="#blockquote">Blockquotes</a></li> -<li><a href="#list">Lists</a></li> -<li><a href="#precode">Code Blocks</a></li> -<li><a href="#hr">Horizontal Rules</a></li> -</ul></li> -<li><a href="#span">Span Elements</a> -<ul> -<li><a href="#link">Links</a></li> -<li><a href="#em">Emphasis</a></li> -<li><a href="#code">Code</a></li> -<li><a href="#img">Images</a></li> -</ul></li> -<li><a href="#misc">Miscellaneous</a> -<ul> -<li><a href="#backslash">Backslash Escapes</a></li> -<li><a href="#autolink">Automatic Links</a></li> -</ul></li> -</ul> - -<p><strong>Note:</strong> This document is itself written using Markdown; you -can <a href="/projects/markdown/syntax.text">see the source for it by adding '.text' to the URL</a>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2 id="overview">Overview</h2> - -<h3 id="philosophy">Philosophy</h3> - -<p>Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.</p> - -<p>Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted -document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking -like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While -Markdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML -filters -- including <a href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html">Setext</a>, <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/">atx</a>, <a href="http://textism.com/tools/textile/">Textile</a>, <a href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html">reStructuredText</a>, -<a href="http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html">Grutatext</a>, and <a href="http://ettext.taint.org/doc/">EtText</a> -- the single biggest source of -inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email.</p> - -<p>To this end, Markdown's syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation -characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so -as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually -look like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even -blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you've ever -used email.</p> - -<h3 id="html">Inline HTML</h3> - -<p>Markdown's syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a -format for <em>writing</em> for the web.</p> - -<p>Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its -syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of -HTML tags. The idea is <em>not</em> to create a syntax that makes it easier -to insert HTML tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already easy to -insert. The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and -edit prose. HTML is a <em>publishing</em> format; Markdown is a <em>writing</em> -format. Thus, Markdown's formatting syntax only addresses issues that -can be conveyed in plain text.</p> - -<p>For any markup that is not covered by Markdown's syntax, you simply -use HTML itself. There's no need to preface it or delimit it to -indicate that you're switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use -the tags.</p> - -<p>The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements -- e.g. <code><div></code>, -<code><table></code>, <code><pre></code>, <code><p></code>, etc. -- must be separated from surrounding -content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should -not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not -to add extra (unwanted) <code><p></code> tags around HTML block-level tags.</p> - -<p>For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:</p> - -<pre><code>This is a regular paragraph. - -<table> - <tr> - <td>Foo</td> - </tr> -</table> - -This is another regular paragraph. -</code></pre> - -<p>Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level -HTML tags. E.g., you can't use Markdown-style <code>*emphasis*</code> inside an -HTML block.</p> - -<p>Span-level HTML tags -- e.g. <code><span></code>, <code><cite></code>, or <code><del></code> -- can be -used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you -want, you can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; e.g. if -you'd prefer to use HTML <code><a></code> or <code><img></code> tags instead of Markdown's -link or image syntax, go right ahead.</p> - -<p>Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax <em>is</em> processed within -span-level tags.</p> - -<h3 id="autoescape">Automatic Escaping for Special Characters</h3> - -<p>In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment: <code><</code> -and <code>&</code>. Left angle brackets are used to start tags; ampersands are -used to denote HTML entities. If you want to use them as literal -characters, you must escape them as entities, e.g. <code>&lt;</code>, and -<code>&amp;</code>.</p> - -<p>Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you want to -write about 'AT&T', you need to write '<code>AT&amp;T</code>'. You even need to -escape ampersands within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:</p> - -<pre><code>http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird -</code></pre> - -<p>you need to encode the URL as:</p> - -<pre><code>http://images.google.com/images?num=30&amp;q=larry+bird -</code></pre> - -<p>in your anchor tag <code>href</code> attribute. Needless to say, this is easy to -forget, and is probably the single most common source of HTML validation -errors in otherwise well-marked-up web sites.</p> - -<p>Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of -all the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand as part of -an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated -into <code>&amp;</code>.</p> - -<p>So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can write:</p> - -<pre><code>&copy; -</code></pre> - -<p>and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:</p> - -<pre><code>AT&T -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown will translate it to:</p> - -<pre><code>AT&amp;T -</code></pre> - -<p>Similarly, because Markdown supports <a href="#html">inline HTML</a>, if you use -angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as -such. But if you write:</p> - -<pre><code>4 < 5 -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown will translate it to:</p> - -<pre><code>4 &lt; 5 -</code></pre> - -<p>However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and -ampersands are <em>always</em> encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use -Markdown to write about HTML code. (As opposed to raw HTML, which is a -terrible format for writing about HTML syntax, because every single <code><</code> -and <code>&</code> in your example code needs to be escaped.)</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2 id="block">Block Elements</h2> - -<h3 id="p">Paragraphs and Line Breaks</h3> - -<p>A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated -by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a -blank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered -blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be intended with spaces or tabs.</p> - -<p>The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" rule is -that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" text paragraphs. This differs -significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable -Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which translate every line break -character in a paragraph into a <code><br /></code> tag.</p> - -<p>When you <em>do</em> want to insert a <code><br /></code> break tag using Markdown, you -end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.</p> - -<p>Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a <code><br /></code>, but a simplistic -"every line break is a <code><br /></code>" rule wouldn't work for Markdown. -Markdown's email-style <a href="#blockquote">blockquoting</a> and multi-paragraph <a href="#list">list items</a> -work best -- and look better -- when you format them with hard breaks.</p> - -<h3 id="header">Headers</h3> - -<p>Markdown supports two styles of headers, <a href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html">Setext</a> and <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/">atx</a>.</p> - -<p>Setext-style headers are "underlined" using equal signs (for first-level -headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For example:</p> - -<pre><code>This is an H1 -============= - -This is an H2 -------------- -</code></pre> - -<p>Any number of underlining <code>=</code>'s or <code>-</code>'s will work.</p> - -<p>Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the line, -corresponding to header levels 1-6. For example:</p> - -<pre><code># This is an H1 - -## This is an H2 - -###### This is an H6 -</code></pre> - -<p>Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely -cosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The -closing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes -used to open the header. (The number of opening hashes -determines the header level.) :</p> - -<pre><code># This is an H1 # - -## This is an H2 ## - -### This is an H3 ###### -</code></pre> - -<h3 id="blockquote">Blockquotes</h3> - -<p>Markdown uses email-style <code>></code> characters for blockquoting. If you're -familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you -know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard -wrap the text and put a <code>></code> before every line:</p> - -<pre><code>> This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, -> consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. -> Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. -> -> Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse -> id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the <code>></code> before the first -line of a hard-wrapped paragraph:</p> - -<pre><code>> This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, -consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. -Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. - -> Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse -id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -</code></pre> - -<p>Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by -adding additional levels of <code>></code>:</p> - -<pre><code>> This is the first level of quoting. -> -> > This is nested blockquote. -> -> Back to the first level. -</code></pre> - -<p>Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists, -and code blocks:</p> - -<pre><code>> ## This is a header. -> -> 1. This is the first list item. -> 2. This is the second list item. -> -> Here's some example code: -> -> return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script"); -</code></pre> - -<p>Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For -example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase -Quote Level from the Text menu.</p> - -<h3 id="list">Lists</h3> - -<p>Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.</p> - -<p>Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably --- as list markers:</p> - -<pre><code>* Red -* Green -* Blue -</code></pre> - -<p>is equivalent to:</p> - -<pre><code>+ Red -+ Green -+ Blue -</code></pre> - -<p>and:</p> - -<pre><code>- Red -- Green -- Blue -</code></pre> - -<p>Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:</p> - -<pre><code>1. Bird -2. McHale -3. Parish -</code></pre> - -<p>It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the -list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML -Markdown produces from the above list is:</p> - -<pre><code><ol> -<li>Bird</li> -<li>McHale</li> -<li>Parish</li> -</ol> -</code></pre> - -<p>If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:</p> - -<pre><code>1. Bird -1. McHale -1. Parish -</code></pre> - -<p>or even:</p> - -<pre><code>3. Bird -1. McHale -8. Parish -</code></pre> - -<p>you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to, -you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that -the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML. -But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.</p> - -<p>If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still start the -list with the number 1. At some point in the future, Markdown may support -starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.</p> - -<p>List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by -up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces -or a tab.</p> - -<p>To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:</p> - -<pre><code>* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. - Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, - viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. -* Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. - Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -</code></pre> - -<p>But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:</p> - -<pre><code>* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. -Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, -viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. -* Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. -Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -</code></pre> - -<p>If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the -items in <code><p></code> tags in the HTML output. For example, this input:</p> - -<pre><code>* Bird -* Magic -</code></pre> - -<p>will turn into:</p> - -<pre><code><ul> -<li>Bird</li> -<li>Magic</li> -</ul> -</code></pre> - -<p>But this:</p> - -<pre><code>* Bird - -* Magic -</code></pre> - -<p>will turn into:</p> - -<pre><code><ul> -<li><p>Bird</p></li> -<li><p>Magic</p></li> -</ul> -</code></pre> - -<p>List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent -paragraph in a list item must be intended by either 4 spaces -or one tab:</p> - -<pre><code>1. This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor - sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit - mi posuere lectus. - - Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet - vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum - sit amet velit. - -2. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -</code></pre> - -<p>It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent -paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be -lazy:</p> - -<pre><code>* This is a list item with two paragraphs. - - This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're -only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor -sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. - -* Another item in the same list. -</code></pre> - -<p>To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's <code>></code> -delimiters need to be indented:</p> - -<pre><code>* A list item with a blockquote: - - > This is a blockquote - > inside a list item. -</code></pre> - -<p>To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs -to be indented <em>twice</em> -- 8 spaces or two tabs:</p> - -<pre><code>* A list item with a code block: - - <code goes here> -</code></pre> - -<p>It's worth noting that it's possible to trigger an ordered list by -accident, by writing something like this:</p> - -<pre><code>1986. What a great season. -</code></pre> - -<p>In other words, a <em>number-period-space</em> sequence at the beginning of a -line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:</p> - -<pre><code>1986\. What a great season. -</code></pre> - -<h3 id="precode">Code Blocks</h3> - -<p>Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or -markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines -of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block -in both <code><pre></code> and <code><code></code> tags.</p> - -<p>To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the -block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this input:</p> - -<pre><code>This is a normal paragraph: - - This is a code block. -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown will generate:</p> - -<pre><code><p>This is a normal paragraph:</p> - -<pre><code>This is a code block. -</code></pre> -</code></pre> - -<p>One level of indentation -- 4 spaces or 1 tab -- is removed from each -line of the code block. For example, this:</p> - -<pre><code>Here is an example of AppleScript: - - tell application "Foo" - beep - end tell -</code></pre> - -<p>will turn into:</p> - -<pre><code><p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p> - -<pre><code>tell application "Foo" - beep -end tell -</code></pre> -</code></pre> - -<p>A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented -(or the end of the article).</p> - -<p>Within a code block, ampersands (<code>&</code>) and angle brackets (<code><</code> and <code>></code>) -are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very -easy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste -it and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the -ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:</p> - -<pre><code> <div class="footer"> - &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation - </div> -</code></pre> - -<p>will turn into:</p> - -<pre><code><pre><code>&lt;div class="footer"&gt; - &amp;copy; 2004 Foo Corporation -&lt;/div&gt; -</code></pre> -</code></pre> - -<p>Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g., -asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means -it's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.</p> - -<h3 id="hr">Horizontal Rules</h3> - -<p>You can produce a horizontal rule tag (<code><hr /></code>) by placing three or -more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. If you -wish, you may use spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the -following lines will produce a horizontal rule:</p> - -<pre><code>* * * - -*** - -***** - -- - - - ---------------------------------------- - -_ _ _ -</code></pre> - -<hr /> - -<h2 id="span">Span Elements</h2> - -<h3 id="link">Links</h3> - -<p>Markdown supports two style of links: <em>inline</em> and <em>reference</em>.</p> - -<p>In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].</p> - -<p>To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately -after the link text's closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses, -put the URL where you want the link to point, along with an <em>optional</em> -title for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:</p> - -<pre><code>This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link. - -[This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute. -</code></pre> - -<p>Will produce:</p> - -<pre><code><p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title"> -an example</a> inline link.</p> - -<p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no -title attribute.</p> -</code></pre> - -<p>If you're referring to a local resource on the same server, you can -use relative paths:</p> - -<pre><code>See my [About](/about/) page for details. -</code></pre> - -<p>Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, inside -which you place a label of your choosing to identify the link:</p> - -<pre><code>This is [an example][id] reference-style link. -</code></pre> - -<p>You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of brackets:</p> - -<pre><code>This is [an example] [id] reference-style link. -</code></pre> - -<p>Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this, -on a line by itself:</p> - -<pre><code>[id]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here" -</code></pre> - -<p>That is:</p> - -<ul> -<li>Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally -indented from the left margin using up to three spaces);</li> -<li>followed by a colon;</li> -<li>followed by one or more spaces (or tabs);</li> -<li>followed by the URL for the link;</li> -<li>optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed -in double or single quotes.</li> -</ul> - -<p>The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle brackets:</p> - -<pre><code>[id]: <http://example.com/> "Optional Title Here" -</code></pre> - -<p>You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra spaces -or tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer URLs:</p> - -<pre><code>[id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here - "Optional Title Here" -</code></pre> - -<p>Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown -processing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.</p> - -<p>Link definition names may constist of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation -- but they are <em>not</em> case sensitive. E.g. these two links:</p> - -<pre><code>[link text][a] -[link text][A] -</code></pre> - -<p>are equivalent.</p> - -<p>The <em>implicit link name</em> shortcut allows you to omit the name of the -link, in which case the link text itself is used as the name. -Just use an empty set of square brackets -- e.g., to link the word -"Google" to the google.com web site, you could simply write:</p> - -<pre><code>[Google][] -</code></pre> - -<p>And then define the link:</p> - -<pre><code>[Google]: http://google.com/ -</code></pre> - -<p>Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for -multiple words in the link text:</p> - -<pre><code>Visit [Daring Fireball][] for more information. -</code></pre> - -<p>And then define the link:</p> - -<pre><code>[Daring Fireball]: http://daringfireball.net/ -</code></pre> - -<p>Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. I -tend to put them immediately after each paragraph in which they're -used, but if you want, you can put them all at the end of your -document, sort of like footnotes.</p> - -<p>Here's an example of reference links in action:</p> - -<pre><code>I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from -[Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3]. - - [1]: http://google.com/ "Google" - [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search" - [3]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search" -</code></pre> - -<p>Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead write:</p> - -<pre><code>I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from -[Yahoo][] or [MSN][]. - - [google]: http://google.com/ "Google" - [yahoo]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search" - [msn]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search" -</code></pre> - -<p>Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML output:</p> - -<pre><code><p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/" -title="Google">Google</a> than from -<a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a> -or <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p> -</code></pre> - -<p>For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using -Markdown's inline link style:</p> - -<pre><code>I get 10 times more traffic from [Google](http://google.com/ "Google") -than from [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or -[MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"). -</code></pre> - -<p>The point of reference-style links is not that they're easier to -write. The point is that with reference-style links, your document -source is vastly more readable. Compare the above examples: using -reference-style links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters -long; with inline-style links, it's 176 characters; and as raw HTML, -it's 234 characters. In the raw HTML, there's more markup than there -is text.</p> - -<p>With Markdown's reference-style links, a source document much more -closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. By -allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph, -you can add links without interrupting the narrative flow of your -prose.</p> - -<h3 id="em">Emphasis</h3> - -<p>Markdown treats asterisks (<code>*</code>) and underscores (<code>_</code>) as indicators of -emphasis. Text wrapped with one <code>*</code> or <code>_</code> will be wrapped with an -HTML <code><em></code> tag; double <code>*</code>'s or <code>_</code>'s will be wrapped with an HTML -<code><strong></code> tag. E.g., this input:</p> - -<pre><code>*single asterisks* - -_single underscores_ - -**double asterisks** - -__double underscores__ -</code></pre> - -<p>will produce:</p> - -<pre><code><em>single asterisks</em> - -<em>single underscores</em> - -<strong>double asterisks</strong> - -<strong>double underscores</strong> -</code></pre> - -<p>You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that -the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span.</p> - -<p>Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:</p> - -<pre><code>un*fucking*believable -</code></pre> - -<p>But if you surround an <code>*</code> or <code>_</code> with spaces, it'll be treated as a -literal asterisk or underscore.</p> - -<p>To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it -would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash -escape it:</p> - -<pre><code>\*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\* -</code></pre> - -<h3 id="code">Code</h3> - -<p>To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (<code>`</code>). -Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a -normal paragraph. For example:</p> - -<pre><code>Use the `printf()` function. -</code></pre> - -<p>will produce:</p> - -<pre><code><p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p> -</code></pre> - -<p>To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use -multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:</p> - -<pre><code>``There is a literal backtick (`) here.`` -</code></pre> - -<p>which will produce this:</p> - -<pre><code><p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p> -</code></pre> - -<p>The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include spaces -- -one after the opening, one before the closing. This allows you to place -literal backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:</p> - -<pre><code>A single backtick in a code span: `` ` `` - -A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `` `foo` `` -</code></pre> - -<p>will produce:</p> - -<pre><code><p>A single backtick in a code span: <code>`</code></p> - -<p>A backtick-delimited string in a code span: <code>`foo`</code></p> -</code></pre> - -<p>With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML -entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML -tags. Markdown will turn this:</p> - -<pre><code>Please don't use any `<blink>` tags. -</code></pre> - -<p>into:</p> - -<pre><code><p>Please don't use any <code>&lt;blink&gt;</code> tags.</p> -</code></pre> - -<p>You can write this:</p> - -<pre><code>`&#8212;` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `&mdash;`. -</code></pre> - -<p>to produce:</p> - -<pre><code><p><code>&amp;#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded -equivalent of <code>&amp;mdash;</code>.</p> -</code></pre> - -<h3 id="img">Images</h3> - -<p>Admittedly, it's fairly difficult to devise a "natural" syntax for -placing images into a plain text document format.</p> - -<p>Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax -for links, allowing for two styles: <em>inline</em> and <em>reference</em>.</p> - -<p>Inline image syntax looks like this:</p> - -<pre><code> - - -</code></pre> - -<p>That is:</p> - -<ul> -<li>An exclamation mark: <code>!</code>;</li> -<li>followed by a set of square brackets, containing the <code>alt</code> -attribute text for the image;</li> -<li>followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to -the image, and an optional <code>title</code> attribute enclosed in double -or single quotes.</li> -</ul> - -<p>Reference-style image syntax looks like this:</p> - -<pre><code>![Alt text][id] -</code></pre> - -<p>Where "id" is the name of a defined image reference. Image references -are defined using syntax identical to link references:</p> - -<pre><code>[id]: url/to/image "Optional title attribute" -</code></pre> - -<p>As of this writing, Markdown has no syntax for specifying the -dimensions of an image; if this is important to you, you can simply -use regular HTML <code><img></code> tags.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2 id="misc">Miscellaneous</h2> - -<h3 id="autolink">Automatic Links</h3> - -<p>Markdown supports a shortcut style for creating "automatic" links for URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or email address with angle brackets. What this means is that if you want to show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also have it be a clickable link, you can do this:</p> - -<pre><code><http://example.com/> -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown will turn this into:</p> - -<pre><code><a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a> -</code></pre> - -<p>Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that -Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex -entity-encoding to help obscure your address from address-harvesting -spambots. For example, Markdown will turn this:</p> - -<pre><code><address@example.com> -</code></pre> - -<p>into something like this:</p> - -<pre><code><a href="&#x6D;&#x61;i&#x6C;&#x74;&#x6F;:&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65; -&#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61;&#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111; -&#109;">&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65;&#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61; -&#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111;&#109;</a> -</code></pre> - -<p>which will render in a browser as a clickable link to "address@example.com".</p> - -<p>(This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if not -most, address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won't fool all of -them. It's better than nothing, but an address published in this way -will probably eventually start receiving spam.)</p> - -<h3 id="backslash">Backslash Escapes</h3> - -<p>Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal -characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown's -formatting syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word with -literal asterisks (instead of an HTML <code><em></code> tag), you can backslashes -before the asterisks, like this:</p> - -<pre><code>\*literal asterisks\* -</code></pre> - -<p>Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:</p> - -<pre><code>\ backslash -` backtick -* asterisk -_ underscore -{} curly braces -[] square brackets -() parentheses -# hash mark -+ plus sign -- minus sign (hyphen) -. dot -! exclamation mark -</code></pre> |