Markdown is an open format that you can use everywhere where Plain Text/UTF-8 is allowed ; it is easy to read, easy to write, easy to convert into the most important standards that we currently have, that is HTML and CSS (byword and markdown-here show that it works also well RTF).

In a nutshell, it is what you need if you want to write for screens, not for a printer (use latexor Word in those cases)

I think that Markdown is better explained in action, so here is a screenshot of how the ByWord text editor looks like when I edit my write-better.md article

Markdown was invented by John Gruber on https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ but, apart from the fact that nobody can remember this URL, the pedagogy of Markdown is yet to be done.

Hence this project.

Technically, this repository is a fork of the website https://whatismarkdown.com/

The original article has been renamed as what-is-markdown.md

Thanks to kirk strobeck for having understood like me and before me that this Markdown thing has a lot of potential... but need a lot of pedagogy too.

• a better DNS : I wanted something easy to remember and to type, no matter what your mother tongue is
• an article of mine that tries to explain why Writers would benefit from markdown | write-better.md

Wisdom is to have dreams that are big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them! -- Oscar Wilde

I'm currently struggling to launch markdown.mobi.

It will be a multilingual wiki (running on dokuwiki) so that non-technical users can contribute too. The format used on this wiki will be Markdown of course.

In an ideal world, I would like to add this on markdown.mobi

• markdown editors especially on the web can be improved. There is a list here of markdown editors that can be embedded on the web
• hence document best practices from existing markdown editors.
• In particular, create a markdown.js file which will make it trivial to implement very useful shortcuts like the shortcuts from ByWord, Word, Google Apps and others
• In particular, have a collection of ready-to-use CSS themes. For example ByWord.css (if they realease it on a free as in speech licence)
• tell other text editor that supporting well markdown is not hard but very useful. For example, I have just opened a feature request for Google Chrome and Google Chrome OS : GoogleChromeLabs/text-app#170
• add more articles explaining what Markdown means for different class of users who need markdown but don't know it yer
• I will probably write in french first since thinking in my mother tongue is much easier
• then of course have someone help me to translate them into english
• but also on each other language, provided that there is a volunteer for that

I would like that a an agile standard comitee, something like the What Working Group that would look at all those XXX-flavored markdown and alternative-to-markdown-syntaxes things and put together ONE coherent markdown 2.0 open format, that would not forget that the Markdown 1.0 essential feature is simplicity.

What you can do :

• proof-read my crappy english
• help me to write the markdown.js file that will make it easy to implement standard markdown shortcuts
• help me to document (in english) the best practices of existing editors
• write more articles on markdown
• translate existing articles
• tell me where I can find CSS stylesheets for markdown, available under a free-as-in-speech license
• tell me what you don't like about markdown
• a little "thank you" is welcomed too :-)

If you know how to use github, you can do this by forking the repository, making your own changes, sending pull requests, opening issues ....

Or you can just send me an email at [email protected]