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[ikiwiki] / doc / todo / Support__47__Switch_to_MultiMarkdown.mdwn

Supporting or switching to MultiMarkdown would take care of a few of the outstanding feature requests. Quoting from the MultiMarkdown site:

>MultiMarkdown is a modification of John Gruber's original Markdown.pl file. It uses the same basic syntax, with several additions:

>   1.  I have added a basic metadata feature, to allow the inclusion of
>       metadata within a document that can be used in different ways based
>       on the output format.

>   2.  I have allowed the automatic use of cross-references within a Markdown
>       document.  For instance, you can easily jump to
>       [the Introduction][Introduction].

>   3.  I have incorporated John's proposed syntax for footnotes. Since he
>       has not determined the output format, I created my own.  Mainly, I 
>       wanted to be able to add footnotes to the LaTeX output; I was less 
>       concerned with the XHTML formatting.

>   4.  Most importantly, however, I have changed the way that the processed 
>       output is created, so that it is quite simple to export Markdown syntax
>       to a variety of outputs.  By setting the `Format` metadata to `complete`,
>       you generate a well-formed XHTML page.  You can then use XSLT to convert
>       to virtually any format you like.

MultiMarkdown would solve the BibTex request and the multiple output formats would make the print_link request an easy fix. MultiMarkdown is actively developed and can be found at:

[MultiMarkdown Homepage](http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/MultiMarkdown)

> I don't think MultiMarkdown solves [[the_BibTeX_request|todo/BibTeX]], but it might solve the request for LaTeX output. --[[JoshTriplett]]

> Unless there's a way to disable a zillion of the features, please **no**. Do _not_ switch to it. One thing that I like about markdown as opposed to most other ASCII markup languages, is that it has at least a bit of moderation on the syntax (although it could be even simpler). There's not a yet another reserved character lurking behind every corner. Not so in multimarkdown anymore. Footnotes, bibliography and internal references I could use, and they do not add any complex syntax: it's all inside the already reserved sequences of bracketed stuff. (If you can even say that ASCII markup languages have reserved sequences, as they randomly decide to interpret stuff, never actually failing on illegal input, like a proper language to write any serious documentation in, would do.) But tables, math, and so on, no thanks! Too much syntax! Syntax overload! Bzzzt! I don't want mischievous syntaxes lurking behind every corner, out to get me. --[[tuomov]]

> ikiwiki already supports MultiMarkdown, since it has the same API as MarkDown. So if you install it as Markdown.pm (or as /usr/bin/markdown), it should Just Work. It would also be easy to support some other extension such as mmdwn to use multimarkdown installed as MuliMarkdown.pm, if someone wanted to do that for some reason -- just copy the mdwn plugin and lightly modify. --[[Joey]]

> There's now a multimarkdown setup file option that uses
> Text::MultiMarkdown for .mdwn files. [[done]] --[[Joey]]