Optional features (was: Markdown Extra Specification (First Draft))

[Yuri Takhteyev]

> I also agree with your opposition to them; if anything, one

> should filter the *output* of a Markdown-to-HTML conversion

> so that it won't matter whether people write literal `<em>`

> tags or use asterisks.


This is true in theory...  I actually just recently write something
along those lines in Lua [1] to use with my Lua wiki.  The idea is to
do as you suggest: Convert from MD to HTML first, then filter the
HTML.  To make it safe, I parse HTML as XHTML and complain if it
doesn't parse.  Hence a problem: if the user screws up with their HTML
(and my filter is pretty unforgiving), it becomes hard to communicate
to them what went wrong.  I can tell them where there is a problem in
the overall HTML, but this doesn't help much, since the user didn't
know there was all of this HTML to begin with.  There is no easy way
to show them where the problem occurred relative to the input that
they provided, or to show them the content with just _their_ HTML
escaped.  So, a good solution in Markdown itself actually would be a
good thing.

  - yuri

[1]: http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/lib/xssfilter/

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