It is an index page for markdown Guides and tutorials for content writers.
What is markdown?
Markdown is an open-source markup language created by John Gruber.
It contains plain text that has been formatted, and is readable using specific syntax before being converted to HTML.
It is simple and easy to learn.
It helps users to write plain text, and convert it to multiple formats like HTML, pdf, etc.
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax.
It contains two things
- Writing text content with special syntax
- Parser to convert this content into different output
It helps developers and content writers to learn markdown.
What is Markdown File Extension?
There is no official extension defined for these types of files.
We can create a plain text file with the .md extension to write content for websites.
We can create a file with different extensions for markdown files.
- .markdown
- .md
- .mkd
- .mkdown
- .text
- .mdown
Some popular vendors use HTML extensions.
GitHub uses the standard file extension as .md.
Other vendors use markdown and mdown extensions.
Advantages
- It is easy to read and write plain text that converts to a Rich HTML document.
- Easy to learn and write content effectively for technical and non-technical people.
- Easy to test the content locally and easy to add/update and delete content
- Support for popular visual editors
- Extending syntax to provide custom elements like audio, video, etc.
- easily share this content between different devices.
- Markdown is standard for writing content on GitHub, GitLab, and Reddit.
Features
The list of features is provided as the basic syntax and extended syntax.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Headings | Headers |
| list | Display the list items order and unordered of elements |
| Tables | Tables |
| Comments | comments are ignored by parsers. |
| Links | Links |
| Images | How to add Images, alt text, and title to display images in markdown |
| blockquotes | blockquotes |
| Emphasis | Emphasis content format |
| Line Break | It explains about adding new lines, blank lines, and line breaks in markdown content |
| Code Blocks | How to add code-fenced blocks to markdown content in programming languages such as Java, Golang, and JavaScript code in markdown content |
Extended Markdown features
| Feature | Description | |
|---|---|---|
MarkdownSharp | extend Markdown syntax used by Stack overflow | |
GitHub Flavored Markdown | GitHub Markdown used to format and syntax highlight blocks |
Language support
It supports all popular languages such as Java, Python, and NodeJS.
Tools convert to pdf/doc/HTML
| Feature | Description | |
|---|---|---|
pandoc | tool to convert this content to PDF, word, and HTML documents | |
GitHub Flavored Markdown | GitHub Markdown used to format and syntax highlight blocks |
Let’s learn some frequently asked questions.
What is the MIME type for Markdown?
There is no office MIME type for Markdown document content as per IANA
, but it can be represented using text/markdown
When markdown data is transferred between client and server, Implementation vendors add MIME type settings specified in requests and responses across the internet.
Content-Type and accept headers in a request object are specified with this format
following is the mime type for these documents.
text/markdown:
and request contains the below value for markdown data sending over the internet
Content-type : text/markdown
The default charset of text content type is ISO-8859-1
So UTF-8 is a common char set for Markdown.
In general, We used to set the below values for the general charset.
text/markdown; charset=UTF-8
RFC also adds a variant for Markdown as seen below
text/markdown; charset=UTF-8; variant=Common
A variant can be Common, GFM, or CommonMark.
What is markdown used for?
It is text content written in text format written by Content writers and converts into different formats like HTML PDF.
Input is readable text with a special syntax, and the application converts to a different format, Output is HTML, PDF, or Word. These can be created and written with any popular text editor. These are used in many ways such as
- Writing content in static generators and generating HTML content
- Can also be used in Slack for communicating with users with this special syntax
- Jira content can include this syntax for HTML elements
Writers, publishers, and academics write content to publish to blogs and articles on web pages and also share across different devices in PDF format.
How do you open markdown files?
These files open in a simple text editor or Integrated Development editors like Visual Studio, Atom Sublime Text, Notepad++, and IntelliJ IDEA in Windows, UNIX, and macOS.
Basic editors provide only the capabilities to read and write without format and validation.
IDEs provide plugins following features.
- Auto or manual Format of the code
- Syntax highlights coloring
- Inline render of this content in HTML view
- Some plugins provide export to PDF and Documents Some characters escaped using angle bracket syntax.