Arbitrary in-content metadata or markup extensions - standard/consensus/process?

[Tao Klerks]

Hi,

 

I'm new to this list, sorry if my question is off-topic - I already see some
controversy around a related question last month, "Universal syntax for
Markdown".

 

I'm wondering whether among the many extensions and flavors of markdown
there are any extensions that support "Highlighting" of specific portions of
content - not in the sense of code highlighters, but rather as you would do
when reviewing a document, for example in Microsoft Word's "Change Tracking"
mode - like using a physical highlighter pen on paper.

 

I am interested in creating an extension (probably to MarkdownDeep, as I'm
most comfortable in the microsoft dev stack) that supports these types of
features, and I'm wondering what sort of syntax would be most "faithful" to
existing markdown standards. On the one hand, I see Maruku's curly-braces
proposal for arbitrary meta-data on arbitrary elements
(http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html), and on the other hand I see
stackoverflow using very different "Tags" syntax as [tag:Something] and
"Spoilers" as a variation on blockquote. Maybe the closest thing to what I'm
looking for is Abbreviation functionality (in that it applies to a section
of text) or Footnote functionality (in that it links to more detailed
content at a separate location) in Markdown Extra; 

 

I'm just wondering whether anyone knows of other implementations that
provide more appropriate functionality for "Commenting on someone else's
document/text", and/or where people who want to design these types of syntax
extensions hang out and agree (or whether it's a free-for-all when you're
looking to implement something new :))

 

Maybe the simplest way to ask this would be: Does anyone know of a single
place/resource where someone is tracking all the extensions to markdown
syntax by implementation/flavour for easy review/comparison/inspiration? I'm
hoping for something like the "Flavour Comparison" page of
regular-expressions.info (I love that site
 the only possible criticism, I
think, is the slightly dated logo/header):
http://www.regular-expressions.info/refflavors.html

(ok, reading through the "Universal syntax for Markdown" thread, it looks
like that's a little naïve/hopeful in my part - in case that is actually an
ongoing effort, I'd love to help!)

 

Ok, done blabbling, thanks for any hints/thoughts/help,

 

Tao

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/attachments/20110919/986842ae/attachment.html>