PHP Markdown Extra

During the last eight months, I added features to PHP Markdown for my own use. Now that they seem to work right, I decided I would release my experiments as a regular markdown.php file usable by anyone. I called it PHP Markdown Extra, because, obviously, it adds extra features on the top of the Markdown syntax. What features exactly?

• Smarter inline HTML block parsing. You can nest block-level elements without much care about indenting the content.

• Markdown formatting inside HTML blocks. Markdown format will be processed inside block-level tags having the markdown="1" attribute.

• Simple tables that look like this:

  Header 1  | Header 2
  --------- | ---------
  Cell 1    | Cell 2
  Cell 3    | Cell 4
  

  It is possible to set text alignement for each column.

• Definition Lists that look like this:

  Term 1
  :   Definition 1
  
  Term 2
  :   Definition 2
  

• Underscore emphasis that only work for whole words.

  Emphasis with underscore will work _for whole words_ 
  but not in the _mid_dle of a word.
  

  This should help when you have to write file or URLs with underscore outside a code span or block. With standard Markdown syntax you would have to backslash-escape the underscores.

If you want to know more, you should read the detailed description of the PHP Markdown Extra.

My wish is that one day these features become part of standard Markdown syntax. Since most of these features appear on John Gruber’s toto list for Markdown 1.1 (see the bottom of this page), I belive my hope is realistic.

Until then, I will continue to update both PHP Markdown and PHP Markdown Extra separately. I may also add more extras to the Extra version eventually.

You can download PHP Markdown Extra form the PHP Markdown main page. It is also available on the dingus if you select the PHP Markdown Extra in the Format menu.

Update: A new version (1.0b4) is now available and solve some problems found in the previous one.

To encourage me to further developing PHP Markdown (and PHP Markdown Extra), you are invided to make a small donation. This is not required: PHP Markdown stays free. But know you can give what you want if you think I deserve it and if you have the means.