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Markdown

  • Notice: all references of MPE in this guide is in reference to Dendron Markdown Preview Enhanced, the default markdown renderer of Dendron

Markdown Basics

This article is a brief introduction to GitHub Flavored Markdown writing.

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a way to style text on the web. You control the display of the document; formatting words as bold or italic, adding images, and creating lists are just a few of the things we can do with Markdown. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters thrown in, like # or *.

Syntax guide

Headers

# This is an <h1> tag

## This is an <h2> tag

### This is an <h3> tag

#### This is an <h4> tag

##### This is an <h5> tag

###### This is an <h6> tag

If you want to add id and class to the header, then simply append {#id .class1 .class2}. For example:

# This heading has 1 id {#my_id}

# This heading has 2 classes {.class1 .class2}

This is a MPE extended feature.

Emphasis

*This text will be italic*
_This will also be italic_

**This text will be bold**
__This will also be bold__

_You **can** combine them_

~~This text will be strikethrough~~

Lists

Unordered List

- Item 1
- Item 2
  - Item 2a
  - Item 2b

Ordered List

1. Item 1
1. Item 2
1. Item 3
   1. Item 3a
   1. Item 3b

Definition List

Item 1
: Definition for Item 1

Item 2
~ Definition for Item 2
~ Another definition for Item 2, with a [link](http://www.example.com)

Images

![GitHub Logo](/images/logo.png)
Format: ![Alt Text](url)

https://github.com - automatic!
[GitHub](https://github.com)

Blockquote

As Kanye West said:

> We're living the future so
> the present is our past.

Horizontal Rule

Three or more...

---

Hyphens

---

Asterisks

---

Underscores

Inline code

I think you should use an
`<addr>` element here instead.

Fenced code block

You can create fenced code blocks by placing triple backticks ``` before and after the code block.

Syntax Highlighting

You can add an optional language identifier to enable syntax highlighting in your fenced code block.

For example, to syntax highlight Ruby code:

```ruby
require 'redcarpet'
markdown = Redcarpet.new("Hello World!")
puts markdown.to_html
```

require 'redcarpet'
markdown = Redcarpet.new("Hello World!")
puts markdown.to_html

Task lists

- [x] list syntax required (any unordered or ordered list supported)
- [x] this is a complete item
- [ ] this is an incomplete item

Extended Syntax

These are non-standard markdown syntax used in Dendron. Everything here is both available in Dendron's preview as well as when publishing.

Tables

You can create tables by assembling a list of words and dividing them with hyphens - (for the first row), and then separating each column with a pipe |:

First Header | Second Header
------------ | -------------
Content from cell 1 | Content from cell 2
Content in the first column | Content in the second column

You can create a table from existing content using > Markdown Shortcuts: Add Table command.

Abbreviation

The HTML specification

_[HTML]: Hyper Text Markup Language
_[W3C]: World Wide Web Consortium
The HTML specification
is maintained by the W3C.

Footnotes

Content [^1]

[^1]: Hi! This is a footnote

Frontmatter Variable Substitution

You can use variables defined in your note frontmatter inside your note. The syntax is {{fm.VAR_NAME}} where VAR_NAME is the name of your variable. The fm designates that you want to use a frontmatter variable.

VSCode Specific Commands

Markdown Smart Select

This allows you to expand and shrink selections of markdown using a keyboard shortcut.

  • Expand: ⌃⇧⌘→
  • Shrink: ⌃⇧⌘←

Selection applies to the following, and follows a traditional hierarchical pattern:

  • Headers
  • Lists
  • Block quotes
  • Fenced code blocks
  • Html code blocks
  • Paragraphs

preview

Image by Microsoft

Compatibility with CommonMark

CommonMark is a strongly defined, highly compatible specification of Markdown

When possible, Dendron will try to stay to CommonMark spec for syntax. That being said, many of the features we have (eg. block based note references) have no common mark equivalent which is why we've had to invent new syntax.

You can use the markdown pod to migrate both individual notes and your entire vault to a CommonMark compatible format.

Other Resources

References

The content of this page is derived from the following sources:

  1. markdown preview enhanced docs published under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
  2. markdown shortcuts docs published under the MIT License