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Markdown Flavor
Markdown comes in more than one flavor.
WriteRoom reads CommonMark, the flavor many apps follow today, plus extensions like tables, footnotes, and math. Unless you've used Markdown for a long time, you probably don't need to worry about any of this.
Older documents may follow Markdown.pl, John Gruber's original Markdown. Choose it, and WriteRoom reads them the way you meant: it follows Markdown.pl where the two disagree and keeps the extensions.
To choose a flavor
- WriteRoom > Settings > Markdown > Flavor
Where the Flavors Differ
| You write | Markdown.pl reads | CommonMark reads |
|---|---|---|
#Heading | A heading | Text |
A wrapped line starting - | Part of the paragraph | A new list |
> lines with a blank line between | One quote | Two quotes |
[text] [id] | One reference link | Only [id] as a link |
[text](my file.md) | A link | Text |
\ at the end of a line | Text | A line break |
There are a few rarer differences too. Bare addresses like www.example.com become links only in CommonMark.
WriteRoom reads Markdown with its own incremental parser. It's new, so some edge cases are likely still off. If a document reads wrong, please let me know in the WriteRoom Support Forum, with a sample that shows the problem.
Extensions
Both flavors also read these extensions from Pandoc:
- Highlights:
==highlighted== - Superscript and subscript:
x^2^andH~2~O - Definition lists: a term on one line, then
:and its definition on the next - Attributes:
{#id .class}at the end of a heading - Front matter: a block of settings between
---lines at the top of the document. It folds when the document opens.