Markdown and Mathematics

[John Gruber]

Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 04/07/04 at 8:38p:

> Jelks Cabaniss wrote:
> 
> > Whatever they end up being, you'll probably want to include the 
> > "notation"
> > along with the delimiters, something like
> >
> >     {$mathml: ... Math expression ... $}
> >     {$latex:  ... line noise ... $}
> 
> I like that idea. It is also my opinion that it's important to include 
> extension's name in the syntax, or otherwise there will be conflict the 
> minute someone want to use more than one extension.

But I don't think Markdown itself should look for or do anything
with the names of these additions. All I want to do at this moment
is decide on a set of delimiters which Markdown will not process the
contents thereof.


> But there is another potential problem: what if someone write this in a 
> code block?

Yeah, that's a tricky question. But I don't think it's up to
Markdown itself to decide.


> Or maybe Markdown could accept *plugins*. That means you put the 
> plugins in a special directory. When parsing, if Markdown encounter a 
> `{$latex: ...$}` block, it looks for a file named "latex" in that 
> directory and process the output using that program. If the plugin is 
> not found, Markdown removes the delimiters and leave only the content.

Whoa, slow down.  :^)

It's possible, at some later date, that we can do this. And we can
do it without breaking 1.0 syntax if we pick good delimiters now.

I'm just not sure what those delimiters should be.

{$...$} isn't too bad. But it's sort of hard to type.

{{...}} is easier to type.

-J.G.