Markup: Markdown

This plugin provides the Markdown markup language by John Gruber, using the ("PHP Markdown") port (including the Markdown Extra extension) by Michel Fortin.

Additionally it can provide the "prettyfier" PHP SmartyPants and PHP SmartyPants Typographer.

Description

Markdown is a plain text format for writing structured documents, based on formatting conventions from email and usenet. It allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Markdown Extra is an extension to PHP Markdown implementing some features currently not available with the plain Markdown syntax.

SmartyPants is a free web typography prettifyier tool for web writers. It translates plain ASCII punctuation characters into "smart" typographic punctuation HTML entities.

Read more:

• Wikipedia page about Markdown
• Markdown project page (including documentation and syntax)
• SmartyPants project page

Configuration

Activate Markdown parser

Markdown can be parsed in …

• Entry bodies
• Extended bodies
• Comments
• HTML nuggets (using serendipity_plugin_html_nugget)

Markdown or Markdown Extra

You can choose from the traditional Markdown and Markdown Extra flavours.

Markdown Extra offers some additional features:

• HTML in Markdown and Markdown in HTML
• attributes like "id" or "class" in Markdown
• fenced code blocks without intendation
• tables
• footnotes
• Abbreviations (<abbr></abbr>)
• definition lists (<dl></dl>)
• ordered lists (<ol></ol>) can start with another value than "1"

Syntax:

• Markdown syntax
• Markdown Extra syntax

All PHP-Markdown configuration options are set to their default values and can't be changed, with one exception: using the lib version, footnotes will get the Serendipity entry id set as prefix (fn_id_prefix).

Markdown version

You can choose from the classic or lib (library package) version.

As the classic version of PHP Markdown and PHP Markdown Extra is no longer being supported since February 1, 2013, you should choose the lib version in any case. Furthermore, the classic version doesn't support SmartyPants or footnote prefixes.

Aktivate SmartyPants or SmartyPants Typographer parser

SmartyPants and SmartyPants Typographer translate plain ASCII punctuation characters into "smart" typographic punctuation HTML entities.

You have to choose the lib version of PHP-Markdown to activate SmartyPants!

Documentation: PHP SmartyPants

Notes

Plugin ordering

The Markdown plugin should always be placed after the GeSHi-Plugin (serendipity_event_geshi), but before all plugins that expect HTML as their input.

CSS for footnotes

The plugin will add some CSS to style footnotes and footnote markers:

/* Footnotes (generated by serendipity_event_markdown) */

footnote-ref:after {
  content: ")";
}

.footnotes hr {
  border-top: dashed #ccc;
  border-width: 1px;
}

/* mostly taken from http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201105/styling_ordered_list_numbers/ */
.footnotes ol {
  counter-reset: li;
  margin-top: .2em;
  margin-left: 1.5em;
  padding-left: 0;
}
.footnotes ol > li {
  list-style: none;
  position: relative;
  padding-left: .5em;
  font-size: 90%;
}
.footnotes ol > li:before {
  content: counter(li)")";
  counter-increment: li;
  position: absolute;
  left: -2em;
  top: -.1em;
  width: 2em;
  text-align: right;
  font-size: 80%;
  font-weight: bold;
}

/* --- end of Footnotes */