Guidance on Markdown: Design Philosophies, Stability Strategies, and Select Registrations
RFC 7764
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Leonard
Request for Comments: 7764 Penango, Inc.
Category: Informational March 2016
ISSN: 2070-1721
Guidance on Markdown:
Design Philosophies, Stability Strategies, and Select Registrations
Abstract
This document elaborates upon the text/markdown media type for use
with Markdown, a family of plain-text formatting syntaxes that
optionally can be converted to formal markup languages such as HTML.
Background information, local storage strategies, and additional
syntax registrations are supplied.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7764.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Leonard Informational [Page 1]
RFC 7764 Guidance on Markdown and text/markdown March 2016
Table of Contents
1. Dive into Markdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. On Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Markdown Design Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Uses of Markdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4. Uses of Labeling Markdown Content as text/markdown . . . . 6
1.5. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Strategies for Preserving Media Type and Parameters . . . . . 7
2.1. Map to Filename and Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2. Store Headers in Adjacent File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3. "Arm" Content with MIME Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4. Create a Local Batch Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.5. Process the Markdown in Advance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.6. Rely on Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.7. Specific Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.7.1. Subversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.7.2. Git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3. Registration Templates for Common Markdown Syntaxes . . . . . 10
3.1. MultiMarkdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2. GitHub-Flavored Markdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3. Pandoc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.4. Fountain (Fountain.io) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.5. CommonMark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.6. kramdown-rfc2629 (Markdown for RFCs) . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.7. rfc7328 (Pandoc2rfc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.8. PHP Markdown Extra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4. Examples for Common Markdown Syntaxes . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1. MultiMarkdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2. GitHub Flavored Markdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3. Pandoc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.4. Fountain (Fountain.io) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.5. CommonMark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.6. kramdown-rfc2629 (Markdown for RFCs) . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.7. rfc7328 (Pandoc2rfc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
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