Markdown

For the marketing term, see Price markdown.
Markdown
Filename extensions
.md, .markdown[1][2]
Internet media typetext/markdown[2]
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI)net.daringfireball.markdown
Developed by
Initial releaseMarch 9, 2004 (20 years ago) (2004-03-09)[3][4]
Latest release
1.0.1
December 17, 2004 (19 years ago) (2004-12-17)[5]
Type of formatOpen file format[6]
Extended topandoc, MultiMarkdown, Markdown Extra, CommonMark,[7] RMarkdown[8]
Websitedaringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

Markdown[9] is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language.[9] Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.

The initial description of Markdown[10] contained ambiguities and raised unanswered questions, causing implementations to both intentionally and accidentally diverge from the original version. This was addressed in 2014 when long-standing Markdown contributors released CommonMark, an unambiguous specification and test suite for Markdown.[11]

  1. ^ Gruber, John (8 January 2014). "The Markdown File Extension". The Daring Fireball Company, LLC. Archived from the original on 12 July 2020. Retrieved 27 March 2022. Too late now, I suppose, but the only file extension I would endorse is ".markdown", for the same reason offered by Hilton Lipschitz: We no longer live in a 8.3 world, so we should be using the most descriptive file extensions. It's sad that all our operating systems rely on this stupid convention instead of the better creator code or a metadata model, but great that they now support longer file extensions.
  2. ^ a b Leonard, Sean (March 2016). "The text/markdown Media Type". Request for Comments: 7763. Internet Engineering Task Force. Archived from the original on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 27 March 2022. This document registers the text/markdown media type for use with Markdown, a family of plain-text formatting syntaxes that optionally can be converted to formal markup languages such as HTML.
  3. ^ Swartz, Aaron (2004-03-19). "Markdown". Aaron Swartz: The Weblog. Archived from the original on 2017-12-24. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
  4. ^ Gruber, John. "Markdown". Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on 2004-03-11. Retrieved 2022-08-20.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference md was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Markdown: License". Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2014-04-25.
  7. ^ Leonard, Sean (March 2016). "Guidance on Markdown: Design Philosophies, Stability Strategies, and Select Registrations". Request for Comments: 7764. Internet Engineering Task Force. Archived from the original on 17 April 2022. Retrieved 27 March 2022. This document elaborates upon the text/markdown media type for use with Markdown, a family of plain-text formatting syntaxes that optionally can be converted to formal markup languages such as HTML. Background information, local storage strategies, and additional syntax registrations are supplied.
  8. ^ "RMarkdown Reference site". Archived from the original on 2020-03-03. Retrieved 2019-11-21.
  9. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference philosophy was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Daring Fireball: Introducing Markdown". daringfireball.net. Archived from the original on 2020-09-20. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference FutureOfMarkdown was invoked but never defined (see the help page).