Understanding Markdown
Markdown is a lightweight markup language designed to write documents in an easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format, which can then be converted into valid XHTML or HTML. It was released in 2004 by John Gruber (writer and UI designer).
Main Purposes
Simplify the web page creation process
Reduce the interference of HTML tags in the writing process
Provide a writing style closer to natural language
Relationship with HTML
HTML is the web format supported by browsers, while Markdown is the language used by writers to create documents.
Markdown cannot achieve all HTML tags; it only supports some commonly used tags.
Relationship with LaTeX
The goal of Markdown is to convert plain text into web content, while LaTeX aims to generate print-standard PDF documents.
Some variants of Markdown, such as MMarked, integrate support for LaTeX math formulas, but do not require any LaTeX packages to be installed.
In the field of digital publishing, the emergence of Markdown has inherited and extended many of the advantages of LaTeX, while addressing its shortcomings.
Advantages of Markdown
Simple and easy to learn: Markdown syntax is simple and intuitive, with a shallow learning curve.
Highly readable: Even raw Markdown text has good readability.
Content-focused: Using Markdown allows authors to focus on content creation rather than formatting.
Version control friendly: As a plain text format, Markdown files are easy to version control.
Various Variants of Markdown
Since the creation of Markdown, many different variants have emerged due to its simple and easy-to-use syntax. These variants expand its functionality while retaining the original simplicity of Markdown, supporting more diverse formatting needs.
CommonMark: A standardized Markdown specification aimed at unifying the differences between various Markdown implementations, ensuring cross-platform consistency.
GitHub Flavored Markdown: The version of Markdown used by GitHub, which adds support for task lists, tables, syntax highlighting in code blocks, and more.
MMarked defines a variant of Markdown that, while compatible with CommonMark syntax, combines the advantages of GFM and adds a large number of math-related syntaxes, such as theorem blocks, solution blocks, and more.