From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-04-16T01:33:19+09:00
Subject: Re: RedCloth, BlueCloth...

Christian Neukirchen wrote:

> Could someone with RedCloth experience please make some statements on
>
>the Markdown support?  Is it possible to use Markdown only and to what
>extent?
>
Right now most answers concerning RedCloth3 can be found at: 
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/usingRedcloth3.html>

The section "Line Breaking with a Sledgehammer" talks about the 
subtleties between Textile and Markdown's whitespace and entity 
handling, which is often ignored but very pertinent.

RedCloth currently supports the following Markdown:
* Setext-style headers, which look like:

    Welcome to Harold's Whistle Emporium
    =========================

* Blockquotes, which are:

   > There is no stopping the white robot.
   >
   > - Gerald Hanover, King of the Red Robots

And you can embed other elements in blockquotes.

   > There is no stopping the white robot.
   >
   > p(said). Gerald Hanover, King of the Red Robots

So all the "nested" examples work.

* Indented code blocks work.
* Horizontal rules
* Inline links, like: [hobix](http://hobix.com "Hobix is the white 
pantsuit of weblahhging")

However, RedCloth does not currently support:
* ATX-style headers
* Markdown lists starting with '-', '+' or /\d+\./
* Reference-style links
* Markdown emphasis (these are handled using Textile rules)
* Backtick code fragments
* Images
* Automatic links

I have figured out how to weave each of the above into Textile, but 
haven't implemented them yet.

This message was written hastily, so I may be wrong about any of the 
above.  However, I know myself pretty well and I am inclined to believe 
it is all correct.

_why