A lightweight markup language, suitable for both shorter and longer texts.
- Simple
- Typographically sound
- Extensible
Bismark is output format agnostic, and should be relatively easy to parse.
It is still in flux and is subject to change. Feedback is welcome.
*bold*
_italic_
`verbatim`
bold
italic
verbatim
There's no underline.
By convention, verbatim text is rendered in a monospaced font.
Links are enclosed in angle brackets <…>.
<https://example.com>
<email@example.com>
The link's text comes before its destination.
<Website https://example.com>
<Email address email@example.com>
The destination is always the last part of the whitespace delimited link. Anything before the destination is the link's text.
A checkbox is either checked [x] or unchecked [ ].
Todo:
[x] Water the dog
[ ] Feed the plants
Todo:
- Water the dog
- Feed the plants
This example requires a Markdown extension to render correctly.
A heading line must start with 1–3 # characters and a space.
# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
There are no more levels.
Paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines.
Line breaks within paragraphs are retained unless escaped. Editors and views are expected to use line and word wrap.
Inline styles can span lines within the same paragraph.
The most dangerous thought you can have
as a creative person is to *think you know
what you're doing*.
The most dangerous thought you can have
as a creative person is to think you know
what you're doing.
Items are either ordered or unordered. Unordered items are prefixed with a • bullet or a - dash.
Nested items must be indented, either with spaces (at least to the leftmost column of the outer item's text) or with tabs (one for each indentation level).
1. Ordered item
• Unordered bullet item
- Unordered dash item
- Ordered item
- Unordered bullet item
- Unordered dash item
A block quote line must start with a > character followed by whitespace.
> Why are you quoting everything I say?
--- Anonymous
Why are you quoting everything I say?
— Anonymous
A verbatim block is opened and closed with a line starting with ```.
```
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
```
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The line must only consist of - and * characters (at least two) and spaces, in any combination.
By convention, it would resemble a dinkus or a horizontal line.
- * -
Because typography matters.
... is an ellipsis
-- is an en-dash
--- is an em-dash
… is an ellipsis
– is an en-dash
— is an em-dash
“Smart quotes” may be provided as an option by the renderer.
Unintended formatting can be prevented with the escape character \.
The asterisk (\*) and backslash (\\) are fine symbols indeed.
\- This is not a list item.
This \-- is no longer an en-dash.
The asterisk (*) and backslash (\) are fine symbols indeed.
- This is not a list item.
This -- is no longer an en-dash.
By escaping a hyphen within a word, it becomes a non-breaking hyphen.
The next hyphen is non\-breaking.
The next hyphen is non‑breaking.
By escaping a space, it becomes a non-breaking space.
This number and its unit must never be broken up by line wrapping: 100\ km
This number and its unit must never be broken up by line wrapping: 100 km
By escaping a line break, it becomes a non-breaking line break ala Markdown.
This line has a hard line break \
that is ignored.
This line has a hard line break that is ignored.
Unicode characters may be added using the escape sequence \HHHHHH with a zero-padded 6-digit hexadecimal Unicode code point.
Nice \01F44D
Nice 👍
In memory of Aaron Swartz (atx).