Support for basic Markdown

[af123]

I've written an initial XenForo Add-on to add basic support for a style of markdown formatting syntax to the forum.
It's a per-user preference which is off by default, and it effectively just replaces some markdown-style tags in your posts with BBCODE before previewing or posting - so it all ends up in the database in BBCODE and if you edit the post later then you'll see the BBCODE.

You can enable it through https://hummy.tv/forum/account/preferences - so far it supports:
``` - for code bocks ` - for inline code __ or ** - for bold _ or * - for italic

Here's an example screenshot with the preview showing.

 

[gomezz]

Age old convention dating back to teletypes is _underscore_ and /italicise/. Why does this not follow that convention?

 

[af123]

No idea.. Markdown is loosely defined at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

 

[everthewatcher]

Age old convention dating back to teletypes is _underscore_ and /italicise/. Why does this not follow that convention?

Don't forget *bold*.

Edit: Oops - should have read everything after signing in.

 

[af123]

Proper markdown should be *italic* or _italic_ and **bold** or __bold__ - I've taken a liberty already by just using _

 

[af123]

Test italic and /mod/webif/lib

 

[Black Hole]

Age old convention dating back to teletypes is _underscore_ and /italicise/. Why does this not follow that convention?

I agree, and have already said so somewhere. The's no reason we can't have our own standard markup language, there doesn't seem to be a single set standard. There just might be a bit of a parsing problem when / is used so commonly for other things.

Proper markdown should be *italic* or _italic_ and **bold** or __bold__ - I've taken a liberty already by just using _

Frankly, that's plain silly.

 

[af123]

The's no reason we can't have our own standard markup language, there doesn't seem to be a single set standard.

We're not going down that road, there may be no RFC for it but the general syntax is well established. The reason I am adding markdown support is because over the past couple of years I've come to use it every day across a large number of platforms (GitHub, Gitter, Jenkins, MatterMost, Reviewboard, Slack to name a few) and when I come here, BBCODE seems clumsy. There's no downside to supporting it now that it's a user preference that defaults to off and it's just a translation layer between the text box and the system. This one might even be worth publishing as a package for other forums to use once it matures a bit.

 

[Ezra Pound]

I feel as if a QI Klaxon is going to go off any second for asking this, but, as there are ways of adding bold, italics, code and inline code to posts already, I'm stuggling to see why a user would use this Markdown facilty

 

[af123]

I feel as if a QI Klaxon is going to go off any second for asking this, but, as there are ways of adding bold, italics, code and inline code to posts already, I'm stuggling to see why a user would use this Markdown facilty

Well it's certainly quicker and if you're used to markdown from other places then it's easier.

 

[Ezra Pound]

Ah OK - Thanks
BTW
In your #1 example above you have :-
'Single asterisk bold single asterisk' creating a bold version of the text, shouldn't that require double asterisks or double underscores?

Should be :-

 

[af123]

In your #1 example above you have :-

I replaced the example at 12:07, you must have been looking at a cached copy - it should be ok now.

 

[af123]

Made a few improvements to the markdown parser. It should leave web links alone now and also not break bulleted lists etc.

 

[Black Hole]

How do I make sure markdown is off for me? I fell foul of it today: '"_"' had to be put in plain tags otherwise the post went silly (but mysteriously not this time).

 

[EEPhil]

How do I make sure markdown is off for me? I fell foul of it today: '"_"' had to be put in plain tags otherwise the post went silly (but mysteriously not this time).

Not sure about the markdown on/off. But the mysterious underscore problem:

This is test _nothing
This is test _italic_

This is test _nothing
This is test italic

 

[af123]

How do I make sure markdown is off for me? I fell foul of it today: '"_"' had to be put in plain tags otherwise the post went silly (but mysteriously not this time).

A while ago, Xenforo got native support for markdown so I retired my plugin in favour of that. I don't think there's a per-user option now; at least I can't find it.

 

[Black Hole]

I don't think there's a per-user option now

Oh bollox!

 

[Trev]

And I just don't understand what the hell you are all banging on about.
Not done with BB code.

 

[MymsMan]

And I just don't understand what the hell you are all banging on about.

Situation normal then

 

[Black Hole]

Arrgghhh! Tripped up again trying to explain crontab (loads of asterisks). This is a pain.