Markdown

Description

INTRODUCTION
Markdown is a tool for converting text to HTML for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write text format, and then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

The excellent design goal for the Markdown formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown document should be available for publication as it is, like plain text, without looking like it was tagged or formatted. While the Markdown syntax has affected several existing text-to-HTML filters, the only source of inspiration for the Markdown syntax is the plain text e-mail format.

The best way to understand the formatting syntax of Markdown is to simply look at the document formatted in Markdown. For example, you can view the source of the Markdown for the article text on this page here: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/index.text

(This ".text" trick can be used to view the Markdown source for the content of each page in this section, for example, on the "Syntax and License" pages).

Markdown is free software, available under an open-source license in the style of BSD. For more information, see the "License" page.

LIST OF DISCUSSIONS
I installed a public mailing list for discussion about Markdown. Any topic related to Markdown - both its formatting syntax and its software - is a fair game for discussion. Anyone can join.

I hope that the mailing list will lead to good ideas for future improvements to Markdown.