Making HTML Markup Easy

August 30th, 2004 | jchaager | technology

Ever get tired of dealing with HTML and all its markup idiosyncrasies? I found a new text markup management plugin for Movable Type this morning. It’s called Markdown from Daring Fireball. It allows you to write up your entries as mildly formatted text, and it will automatically convert them to HTML for you. For example, Making something italics is just a matter of putting asterisks around it, \*italics\*, which gives you italics.

One of the nicest features is its reference linking of URLs. Instead of having to embed the hyperlink references directly into the middle of your code, you can simply insert a link reference which you define later in a more convenient place in the text. For example, to create a link to this site, you can simply type:

\[John's Ponderings]\[]

Then later in the text, include the reference to it by type:

\[John's Ponderings]: http://johnc.haager.net/blog/

Markdown will automatically create the hyperlink at all of the referenced points. This results in an entry like this: John’s Ponderings

This makes it easy to convert all mentions of a word or phrase into a hyperlink, yet only have to type the actual hyperlink address once. Eliminates a lot of typos.

It is not a comprehensive replacement for HTML, and it isn’t intended to be. What it does is allow you to format your messages the same way you format e-mail and plain text documents. It will then convert those formatting conventions into HTML for you. Since your entries are stored in the database in the Markdown text format and converted to HTML during publishing, your entries are much easier to proofread.

A nice companion to Markdown is SmartyPants, an automatic “smart quote” conversion plugin for Movable Type also available from Daring Fireball. It will scan your text, and automatically convert the standard straight quotes people normally type into the typographically correct opening and closing quotes. It works transparently, which makes it a great add-on. No extra work needed.

Installation of both of these plugins is a simple matter of copying the Perl scripts into the plugins directory on your Movable Type installation.