YJL

I have been writing posts using Markdown with python-markdown2.

Using it makes me feel more clear while I am writing a post. One thing I love most of Markdown is how we make a link. Here is an example:

This is a [text][link-id].

[link-id]: http://example.com

That is how you can make links¹. If your post has, say, a dozen of links, the HTML source would read like a mess if you prefer not to use WYSIWYG editor. And one possible benefit is you can generate HTML with Markdown source file and additional links file (a links database), just need a shell scripting trick to supply. You put some common links in it, so you can directly use them with specifying again in your Markdown source file. For example:

[google]: http://www.google.com
[twitter]: http://twitter.com
[markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
(lots of links)

If you read the Syntax of Markdown, you might think there is something missing. I have to say you are wrong. You can always enter HTML code, though there might have some catches you might have to be aware of.

For <script>, I have no problem with it, you can just copy some code snippet and paste it, that always works.

Happy mood? If you want to add some colors just use span, e.g. <span style="color:#f00">Text in RED!</span>.

Images from Flickr? I just copy the HTML code provided by Flickr directly, I only wrap them with <div style="text-align:center">CODE from Flickr</div>, so the images would be aligned at center.

If you want to embed a stylesheet make sure you have it like this way:

<div>
<style>
#something {
  background-color: #fff;
  color: #000;
  }
</style>
</div>

Using <div> to wrap it up.

python-markdown2 is a really good converter, I haven’t met any bugs. And if your post have some code and it happens to have foo_bar_this(), there is a conflict with _ since Markdown use it to mark italic and bold texts. python-markdown2 has an Code friendly extension to get rid of it, so you down have to manually escape it, e.g. \_. The other good extension is the Footnotes extenstion, you can put some footnotes on your posts like this².

Using Markdown to write makes me concentrate on contents not the typesetting. I also have clear idea what pages I have linked.

If you also use Vim, you can download the syntax file from here for Markdown source files.

[1]	It also has other ways to make links.

[2]	An example footnote.