MultiMarkdown

Cross-references

Cross-references will become your new best friend when writing long documents. They will highly improve the navigability of the generated documents by giving the reader links to jump across sections with a single click.

Example

Clicking [here][section-preview] will lead you to the **Preview** section.

Result

Clicking here will lead you to the Preview section.

Footnotes

Footnotes are a simple, yet effective way of conveying non-crucial information to the reader.

Rather than parenthesizing a side note or place it between em-dashes – as unimportant as it is, the reader will go through it, just like you did now – you can defer its reading and expand on your thoughts there.

Example

Clicking this number[^fn-sample_footnote] will lead you to a footnote.

[^fn-sample_footnote]: Handy! Now click the return link to go back.

Result

Clicking this number[2] will lead you to a footnote.

Definitions

Definitions allow you specify different terms or can be set up to show you a chat log.

Please note the white space being used.

Example

Apple
:   Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in
    the family Rosaceae.

    Also the makers of really great products.

Banana
:   1. A delicious fruit that can be hazardous
    if left on the ground.

    2. A fruit that comes with it's own packaging

Orange
:   The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

Result

Apple

Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in the family Rosaceae.

Also the makers of really great products.

Banana

1. A delicious fruit that can be hazardous if left on the ground.

2. A fruit that comes with it’s own packaging

Orange

The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

Custom attributes

MultiMarkdown introduces an unobtrusive way of adding custom attributes to images and links, allowing you to change they way they are displayed.

NOTE
This is not available for inline links or images.

Example

The original image is 128x128 and contains no shadow.
![Original icon][img-icon_original]

It will be displayed as 96x96 with a subtle shadow.
![Styled icon][img-icon_styled]

[img-icon_original]: img/icon128.png "B"
[img-icon_styled]: img/icon128.png "B" width="96px" height="96px"
class="shadow"

Meta information

With MultiMarkdown, you can also embed metadata on your documents.

Metadata must be placed at the top of the document – there can be no white-spaces before – and it ends with the first empty line. Each entry is composed of key and values, separated by a colon ( :).

There are plenty of keys supported, some of the most common being Title, Author, Date, Copyright, Keywords and Email. Be sure to check Fletcher’s guide for a full reference.

TIP
When adding metadata information to your documents, make sure you always leave two spaces at the end of each metadata line. This will ensure that exporting to plain Markdown will result in a properly formatted piece of text – as opposed to a single run-on paragraph.

Example

Title:  Document title
Author: John Doe
        Jane Doe
Date:   January 1st, 2012

Tables

Tables are perfect to display structured data in rows and columns. MultiMarkdown supports the generation of tables by using a couple of simple rules alongside the use of the pipe character – |.

Example

| First Header  | Second Header | Third Header         |
| :------------ | :-----------: | -------------------: |
| First row     | Data          | Very long data entry |
| Second row    | **Cell**      | *Cell*               |
| Third row     | Cell that spans across two columns  ||
[Table caption, works as a reference][section-mmd-tables-table1]

Result

Structure

If you are familiar with HTML tables, you’ll instantly recognize the structure of the table syntax. All tables must begin with one or more rows of headers, and each row may have one or more columns.

These are the most important rules you’ll be dealing with:

• There must be at least one | per line;
• After the header rows, there must be a line containing only |, -, :, ., or spaces;
• Cell content must be on one line only;
• Columns are separated by |.

Alignment

To align the data cells on the table, you need to introduce a special row right after the headers, that will determine how the following rows – the data rows – will be aligned.

| Header One | Header Two | Header Three | Header Four |
| ---------- | :--------- | :----------: | ----------: |
| Default    | Left       | Center       | Right       |

The placing of the colon ( :) is optional and determines the alignment of columns in the data rows. This line is mandatory and must be placed between the headers and the data rows.

Also, the usage of the | at the beginning or end of the rows is optional – as long as at least one | is present in each row.

Column spanning

To make a cell span across multiple columns, instead of using a single pipe ( |) character to delimit that cell, use the number of pipes corresponding to the columns you wish to span.

| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 |
| -------- | :------: | -------- | -------- |
| No span  | Span across three columns    |||

NOTE
This is only an introduction to MultiMarkdown’s tables. For the full reference, please refer to the “Tables” section on the MultiMarkdown user guide.

Taken from the Byword MultiMarkdown Guide