Freeware February: Markdown

It’s John Gruber appreciation week here at TUAW. I’m very sad to witness the end of this Freeware February series, but I’m happy to ring it out with one uber-useful tool for web authors. Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool that enables you to write in a format that’s actually legible, then convert your text into structurally valid XHTML markup. Written in Perl (there’s also a PHP version), it works as a Unix filter or script plug-in to BBEdit or TextWrangler, the latter of which is my new editor of choice thanks to recommendations from all of you.

I only started putting Markdown into practical usage this past month (this entry composed in it!), and I can safely say it’s drastically improved my workflow. As a programmer, I truly appreciate the underlying philosophy of using one simpler, more legible method of markup to specify another, machine-presentable version. The software is freely available under a BSD-style open source license, but if you use it and enjoy its numerous benefits, please consider chipping in to support further development of an already life-saving utility.

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It’s John Gruber appreciation week here at TUAW. I’m very sad to witness the end of this Freeware February series, but...

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Alex Kadis

Instead of trying to install it into Text Wrangler, why not make it available in ALL of your applications (e.g. SubEthaEdit, TextEdit... what have you...) Try Humane Text Service http://gu.st/proj/HumaneText.service/ It converts Markdown to HTML (and vise-versa), automatically with a keyboard shortcuts. Oh, and it's free.

February 28 2005 at 7:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

barb dybwad

@_Don: Perl comes automagically installed if you're running a recent version of OS X. You will need to download and unstuff the archive, which will contain a file called Markdown.pl - you'll want to copy or move that file into Home > Library > Application Support > TextWrangler > Unix Support > Unix Filters. Then, you'll be able to select a block of text and invoke the filter from the #! menu; Markdown will be an option under #! > Unix Filters. Hope that helps!

February 28 2005 at 7:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jonathan Mitchell

Tex-Edit Plus has effective scripts to convert to, or from, HTML and works out of the box with no need to instal anything. Used it for years, find it very clean- but my needs are simple. See www.jonathanmitchell.info/cc/cc_sco_licence.html for an example.

February 28 2005 at 4:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

_Don

Okay, this is something I can use. Not being a developer, I don't get how to install this with Text Wrangler to work. It says is needs Perl and something else. Do I need to install all this too?

February 28 2005 at 4:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply