Markdown

What is Markdown?

Markdown is an easy-to-use markup language that is used with plain text to add formatting elements (headings, bulleted lists, URLs) to plain text without the use of a formal text editor or the use of HTML tags.

Why Markdown?

• Can be used for everything (websites, documents, notes, books, presentations, email messages, and technical documentation).
• Portability: Files containing Markdown-formatted text can be opened using virtually any application.
• Platform independent: You can create Markdown-formatted text on any device running any operating system.
• Future proof: You’ll always be able to read Markdown-formatted text using a text editing application.
• It is everywhere: Websites like Reddit and GitHub support Markdown, and lots of desktop and web-based applications support it.

How does Markdown work?

1. Create a Markdown file using a text editor or a dedicated Markdown application. The file should have an .md or .markdown extension.

2. Open the Markdown file in a Markdown application.

3. Use the Markdown application to convert the Markdown file to an HTML document.

4. View the HTML file in a web brower or use the markdown application to convert it to another file format, like PDF.

Strengths & Challenges

• It simple, fast and easy to learn which made it very popular
• All features of HTML can be used in Markdown and it is more readable than HTML
• Markdown is not able to map different element types to each other, so it is less useful as a semantic tool
• Creation of table of contents, reusing content, mixing parts together and managing larger documents are not possible

In the following, the basics will be presented. You can find more here

Formating examples

Headings

Create a hierarchically nested system in your text, and consider balance to this end. Most larger headings should contain smaller headings, yet not too many of these. Find a balance.

`# The largest heading`
`## The second largest heading`
`##### The smallest heading`

Text styles

##### *Styling text*:
`**This is bold text**`
`*This text is italicized* or _This text is italicized_`
`**This text ist bold and _partly italicized_**`
`***The entire text is bold and italicized***`

**Like this bold text**

Quoting

##### *Quoting*:

`> Text is a quote`
> Like this  quote
`Use backticks (``) to code quote `
```
\```  without backslash (\)
This is a 
code quote block
\````
```
A code block like this
```

Links

##### *Links*:
`This normal text includes the website [website text](https://docs.github.com)`

##### *Relative Links*:
`We can link a relative to the current file by [text](path/file.md)`

##### *Images*:
`We can display an image using ![image text](image_link)`

Lists

##### *List*:
```
[A link Like this to run Markdown ](https://stackedit.io/app#)
![test imge](https://picsum.photos/200/300)
```markdown
- George Washington
- John Adams
- Thomas Jefferson
```
- We can also created
- unordered lists
1. or create 
2. ordered lists
```

##### *Nested Lists*:
```
1. First list item
   - either (-) or (*) needs to be under the first character of the previous item
     * this would be the third nested list item
```

Mentions and footnotes

##### *Mentioning people and Teams*:
`@name Do you understand how it works?`

```
@https://github.com/teslamotors

##### *Footnotes*:
```
Simple footnote[^1]
Footnote with several lines[^2]
It is also possible to use words[^note]

[^1]: First reference
[^2]: Second reference
   with multiple lines

[^note]: words are still converted to numbers but makes it more readable for you as you edit.
```

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The author of this entry is XX. Edited by Milan Maushart