[ANN] PHP Markdown 1.0b5

[Michel Fortin]

Following the release of Markdown 1.0b5, here is PHP Markdown 1.0b5. It 
can be tested on the PHP Markdown Dingus at 
<http://www.michelf.com/php-markdown/>. There is a discrete download 
link at the bottom of the page.

PHP Markdown is very closely tied to John's Markdown. Any bug in his 
betas will most probably come to the PHP side too. As I'm going to 
follow in his steps for the betas to come, I recommend caution to any 
PHP Markdown users that would like to use it for something serious. 
Sticking with version 1.0b4.1, based on the more tested original beta 
4, may be a good thing to do.

The release notes for 1.0b5 are mostly the same as for John's Markdown, 
with the first thing removed (was Perl specific) and two things added 
(at the end).


1.0b5: Sun 2 May 2004
	
*	Workaround for supporting <ins> and <del> as block-level tags.
	This only works if the start and end tags are on lines by
	themselves.

*	Three or more underscores can now be used for horizontal rules.

*	Lines containing only whitespace are trimmed from blockquotes.

*	You can now optionally wrap URLs with angle brackets -- like so:
	`<http://example.com>` -- in link definitions and inline links and
	images.

*	`_` and `*` characters in links and images are no longer escaped
	as HTML entities. Instead, we use the ridiculous but effective MD5
	hashing trick that's used to hide these characters elsewhere. The
	end result is that the HTML output uses the literal `*` and `_`
	characters, rather than the ugly entities.

*	Passing an empty string to the Markdown function no longer creates
	an empty paragraph.
	
*	Added a global declaration at the beginning of the file. This
	means you can now `include 'markdown.php'` from inside a function.


Any bugs, comments, and suggestions are welcome.

On another front, a better website for PHP Markdown is on the way and 
should see the light in the next month.

Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/