Markdown Rendering and Flavored Markdown

5 posts · Feb 2014 – Sep 2021

What this trail covers

GitLab's Markdown rendering has evolved to align with established specifications, requiring two spaces at the end of a line for a newline. The Web IDE and Web Editor now include a real-time, side-by-side preview panel for Markdown content, allowing users to see changes as they are made without context switching.

All GitLab trails

Sep 2021GitLab's realtime Preview Markdown is an editor for everyoneIntroduced a real-time, side-by-side Markdown preview panel in the Web IDE and Web Editor, accessible via a button or keyboard shortcut (Command/Control + Shift + P). This feature allows users to see rendered Markdown content as they type, improving the editing experience for Markdown files.
Jun 2019How we migrated to CommonMarkThis post details GitLab's migration from RedCarpet to CommonMark for Markdown rendering. It outlines the motivation for the migration, focusing on the inconsistencies of various Markdown flavors and the goal of achieving consistent rendering across platforms. The migration was executed in three phases: initially only for new content, then extending to repository and wiki files, and finally removing RedCarpet entirely. The post also highlights improvements made upstream to the cmark-gfm library, specifically regarding strikethrough syntax and a bug fix for table rendering. A tool, diff_redcarpet_cmark, was developed to assist in converting existing content.
Jul 2016Markdown Kramdown Tips and TricksThis post details how to leverage Kramdown's syntax for applying CSS classes, custom IDs, and attributes to elements, generating tables of contents, embedding HTML blocks (including iframes and CodePens), and mixing HTML with Markdown. It also covers the ability to add `<style>` tags directly within markdown files for localized styling. The post emphasizes the flexibility and power of Kramdown for creating rich content within the GitLab platform.
Feb 2014Markdown newline behaviourThis post proposes a change to GitLab's Markdown rendering to align with the official Markdown specification, specifically regarding newline behavior. It advocates for rendering line breaks only when a line ends with two or more spaces, while paragraphs remain separated by blank lines. The post also highlights that this change will be applied uniformly across all Markdown usage within GitLab, including issues and merge requests, to maintain a consistent GitLab Flavored Markdown experience.
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