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MultiMarkdown syntax/engine used in other apps

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Kolen

03 Apr, 2016 01:20 AM

In short, are there a list of apps that implement MultiMarkdown by either using its engine or at least produce identical output (passes all MMD tests)?

The reason behind the need of such a list is this: I'm shopping around iOS apps that support MMD and find it hard to discover any apps that can render MMD that is identical to MMD and MMDC. For example, I bought Editorial and it has a MultiMarkdown mode, but with my own test file it shows differences from MMD's rendering, and it doesn't recognize math, and probably don't process the metadata front matter. I searched and found out Drafts and Byword also support MMD. But since I don't own the app, I can't test it (and Byword do not have a trial even on the desktop version). From google search, it seems like Byword is using MMD's engine, but it isn't clear.

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by fletcher on 03 Apr, 2016 09:01 PM

   

   I do not have a list like that. Some developers claim MMD support, but
   really mean Markdown. Sometimes they support some MMD features, but not
   others.

   Other times, they simply have an older version of MMD.

   The only "official" MMD editor is MultiMarkdown Composer. I'm currently
   rewriting if for v3 -- the code is designed to also run on iOS, but will
   need a different "wrapper". Mac apps can be document centric, whereas
   iOS is more "app-centric". Once v3 for Mac is released, I'll work on
   releasing the iOS version.

   FTP

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2. 2 Posted by Kolen on 29 Apr, 2016 04:29 PM

   

   Just in case some people are wondering,

   Drafts

   Regarding the iOS app Drafts:

   Here's my finding:

   • in the newest MMD, metadata related to LaTeX are suppressed, but not in Drafts
   • auto Cross-References does not work: [heading][] syntax is not supported.
   • all the headings do not have auto-id: # heading1 should have an id of heading1
   • CriticMarkup is not supported
   • the rendering of the tables has some differences in the code, probably because of an older version of MMD?
   • if I put {{TOC}} (one in the markdown source), Drafts would incorrectly rendered it asTOC`
   • Drafts put <br/> into Math environments, which I believe is a mistake.

   I contacted Drafts and here's their reply:

   Drafts uses MMD 4. It uses the actual C implementation directly from Fletcher Penney, so there should be no compatibility variances.

   Drafts does not attempt to be a complete Markdown solution, as it's focus is on the capture and forward of shorter texts, so it does not expose the complexity of all the different MMD flags that are available, so if there are differing behaviors it is likely be cause of a difference in configuration flags.

   It will periodically be updated, possibly to MMD 5 eventually, but it will never move quickly with every update and addition to the MMD engine to avoid conflicts and stability issues for people who rely on certain behaviors.

   Editorial

   This does not use mmd's engine, but (quite naturally used python) to render the markdown. Although they claim mmd support, they configure it (and possibly doing some other things) to render most of mmd's syntax.

   My findings are in markdown-cheatsheet/appendix.md at gh-pages · ickc/markdown-cheatsheet

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3. fletcher closed this discussion on 02 Dec, 2017 01:55 PM.