GAMBAS BOOK 3.19.1

The question of what MarkDown is is most clearly answered at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown:

Markdown is a simplified markup language designed by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. One of the goals of Markdown is that the original form should be easily readable without further conversion. Therefore, mainly markup types that are common in plain text and e-mails were used as markup elements. Other markup languages with similar readability goals - such as reStructuredText or Textile - also had an influence on the syntax. Markdown conversion software converts text into valid and W3C-compliant XHTML…. Markdown uses mainly punctuation marks to mark up text, and in some cases allows several equivalent methods. Characters that are usually understood as format commands can be masked (skipped) with a backslash. For example, an asterisk symbol (“asterisk”, “*”) at the beginning of a line is interpreted as a bullet; if you really want an asterisk, preface it with a backslash: “\*”. Authors can use XHTML block elements for more complex mark-ups if necessary. These elements are transferred to the target document by the conversion software without any changes. This makes it possible to format areas of the document in ordinary XHTML.

The MarkDown component (gb.markdown) provides the (basic) functionality to generate an HTML file from a text file in MarkDown syntax via the two classes MarkDown and MarkDownLink. The main field of application for the MarkDown component is the generation of HTML pages for the documentation of components, classes and projects of the Gambas programming language. The wiki of the Gambas developer pages is a collection of HTML pages generated via MarkDown texts → http://gambaswiki.org/wiki.

The following list of links will take you to interesting websites, each of which addresses the topic of MarkDown in a special way:

• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
• http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
• http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
• http://markdown.de/syntax/index.html
• http://blog.sudobits.com/2012/10/12/markdown-editor-for-ubuntu-12-0412-10/

On the one hand, the syntax of the Gambas MarkDown variant largely follows the original by John Gruber. On the other hand, special syntax elements are added that result from the above-mentioned purpose. A great advantage is the possibility to add your own syntax elements. You can find out how this can be done, for example, in chapter → 24.7.1 Projects in the presented project 2.

In the DownLoad section you will find a reference list of the Gambas MarkDown syntax.