Markdown Notation

Markdown is notation used in user forums, README files, and the like. The beauty of it is that a markdown file is completely humanly readable and writeable, unlike HTML or XML that use complex tag schemes. At the same time, markdown was designed to be renderable as a web page by tools.

There are numerous markdown editors with web preview. But with a little experience, a dedicated markdown editor becomes unnecessary because the format is so simple that any plain text editor will do.

Mostly, a markdown document is just plain text, but recognizes some marks for enrichment. There are only few features of markdown that you need to know in order to write rules of engagement and use md2orchestra:

• Paragraphs are separated by an extra line break.
• Headings begin with a hash mark "#" for each heading level.
• Words can be emphasized as by typing *italic* for italic or **bold** for bold.
• Tables are drawn with bars "|" to separate columns and one row of hyphens to set off the column headers. (You don't need to line up columns precisely, unless you want to.)

See this cheat sheet for more.

Conventionally, markdown files are saved with ".md" extension.