Computer Science, Languages, Markup, Markdown, History
Daring Fireball: Markdown
Citation
Written by John Gruber
Memex Spaces:
- Inbox
- _To Process
- To Process in TheBrain
Highlights and Notes
Markdown 1.0.1 (18 KB) — 17 Dec 2004
- The creation date of Markdown 2004-12-04
Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML.
- Though Markdown started as a quick tool to create HTML faster, it has grown to be a valid markup language on its own
The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters, the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.
- Proof of a KISS philosophy