Markdown

File Format
Name	Markdown
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Markup Markdown
Extension(s)	.md, .markdown, .mdown, .markdn
MIME Type(s)	text/x-markdown

Markdown is a lightweight and human readable markup format for text formatting created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. It is similar to various forms of wiki markup.

There is no formal specification for the original Markdown, and it has ambiguities that are handled inconsistently by different implementations. An attempt to improve on this situation was done (released 2014-09) by a group unrelated to the originators of Markdown, and was originally dubbed Standard Markdown until John Gruber objected to this name, and it was first renamed "Common Markdown" and later CommonMark.

Specs and format descriptions

• Official 2004 specification and markdown to HTML conversion tool
• Draft application for text/markdown media (MIME) type
• Markdown license

Software and Tools

• Markdownpad: edit Markdown (Windows; commercial, with free-of-charge version)
• MacDown (OS X; open source)
• Trunk Notes: note-taking app that uses Markdown (iOS; commercial, paid)
• Babelmark: tool to show differences in Markdown implementations (FAQ)
• scholmd: Tools and resources for Markdown documents
• Dillinger: cloud-enabled HTML5 Markdown editor

Commentary

• Switching to Markdown for Scholarly Article Production
• What is the mime type for Markdown?
• Discussion of media type application
• CommonMark and the Future of Scholarly Markdown
• How to Ditch Word

Other links

• Byword MultiMarkdown Guide
• Markdown Extra - includes support for tables, definition lists, footnotes, etc.
• Markdown Community Group
• CommonMark