Markdown is a markup language.
Its advantage over HTML is that it allows to format text while keeping the text readable as plain text. It is more easibly readible and writable compered to other markup languages.
On the other hand, it is more human-oriented than computer-oriented so it cannot be parsed as easily as other more structured languages.
Markdown Specification
Markdown has not a strong specification, and it leads to some ambiguities.
A strong and popular specification of markdown is CommonMark. You can read more in the CommonMark official website.
Markdown Editors
Markdown editors featured on this post:
- Marktext
- Obsidian
- Visual Studio Code
Marktext
Marktext is FOSS.
Obsidian
Obsidian is one of the most popular markdown editors. It has preview or WYSIWYG capabilities.
Obsidian is proprietary software.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code contains extension for markdown file edition.
One of the most popular extensions for this purpose is markdownlint.
markdownlint at Visual Studio Marketplace
Markdown Conversor
There are tools to convert Markdown documents to other formats like DOCX, PDF or EPUB. One of these tools is pandoc.
Markdown Syntax
Referring to a section within the same document
There are basically two ways:
- Title
- Other sections
Referring to a title within the same document
Markdown creates an anchorage to a title within the document.
[click on this link](#my-multi-word-header)
### My Multi Word HeaderReferring to a section different to a title within the same document
You need to use HTML in this case.
[click on this link](#reference)
<a id="reference">Text</a>The use of attribute “name” instead of “id” comes from older HTML versions, but its use is now deprecated.
Markdown extensions
Markdown extensions:
- CommonMark
- John Gruber’s Markdown
- Quarto Markdown
CommonMark is a markup language based Markdown that formalize its specification.
John Gruber’s Markdown is an extension of Markdown aimed to document generation and publishing.
John Gruber’s Markdown website
Pandoc Markdown is a slightly modified version of John Gruber’s Markdown.
Pandoc can convert to other document formats John Gruber’s Markdown and other Markdown extensions. You can read more on this external link.
Quarto Markdown is an extension on Pandoc Markdown. It is the one used in Quarto publishing system.
You might also be interested in…
External References
- Reddit community; “Markdown editor with WYSIWYG for basic note taking“; Reddit
- Referring to a section within the same document
- Eddimens; “Jumping To Any Section Of Your Markdown Document“; Eddimens
- Stackoverflow; “How to link to part of the same document in Markdown?“; Stackoverflow