This quick post covers the extras provided by kramdown (not capitalised!), in addition to Markdown.

kramdown is a superset of Markdown. It does everything that Markdown does, plus some extras. The extras that are useful to me include:

Pretty text

  • "" → “” (curly quotes)
  • '' → ‘’ (curly quotes)
  • --- → — (em-dash)
  • -- → – (en-dash)

Footnotes

This is a great way of keeping core text clear, and details accessible.

Code:

This is some text.[^1] Other text.[^footnote]
[^1]: Some footnote definition.
[^footnote]: Another footnote

Output: This is some text.1 Other text.2

Numbering is sequential and doesn’t depend on the labels used in the code. The footnotes can go anywhere in the document.

Code blocks

  • …begun and ended with a line of several tilde ~ characters on their own:

Code (using inline attribute list):

~~~
def what?
  42
end
~~~
`{: .language-ruby}`

Output:

def what?
  42
end

Output (using ruby after the initial tildes):

def what?
  42
end

Output (using html after the initial tildes):

<html>
  <p>Hello, world</p>
</html>

Output (using css after the initial tildes):

.center {
  text-align: center;
  color: red;
}

Improved tables

Code: EITHER

|-----------------+------------+-----------------+----------------|
| Default aligned |Left aligned| Center aligned  | Right aligned  |
|-----------------|:-----------|:---------------:|---------------:|
| First body part |Second cell | Third cell      | fourth cell    |
| Second line     |foo         | **strong**      | baz            |
| Third line      |quux        | baz             | bar            |
|-----------------+------------+-----------------+----------------|
| Second body     |            |                 |                |
| 2 line          |            |                 |                |
|=================+============+=================+================|
| Footer row      |            |                 |                |
|-----------------+------------+-----------------+----------------|

OR

|---
| Default aligned | Left aligned | Center aligned | Right aligned
|-|:-|:-:|-:
| First body part | Second cell | Third cell | fourth cell
| Second line |foo | **strong** | baz
| Third line |quux | baz | bar
|---
| Second body
| 2 line
|===
| Footer row

Output:

Default aligned Left aligned Center aligned Right aligned
First body part Second cell Third cell fourth cell
Second line foo strong baz
Third line quux baz bar
Second body      
2 line      
Footer row      

Math blocks

I don’t use them, but they’re rather wonderful!

It turns out that while kramdown supports Mathjax, you do need to call the relevant Javascript. I don’t want to bog down this website just for one demo.

  1. Some footnote definition. ↩

  2. Another footnote ↩