Mehdown 2.0
25We’ve launched version 2.0 of the Markdown parser we use on the forums at meh.com and other mediocre.com websites.
If you’ve ever had trouble with odd things like URLs with underscore characters not linking correctly, newline characters in block quotes, or have ever wanted to add start times to your YouTube embeds… this release is for you.
Markdown Extensions
At its core, Mehdown is a Markdown parser. Most of the features of Markdown should work as expected.
In addition to the traditional Markdown feature set, Mehdown adds the following features:
Automatically convert URL-like text to links
No need remember the Markdown syntax for adding links. If you have a URL just paste it in and Mehdown will automatically convert it to a link for you.
https://meh.com or just meh.com
https://meh.com or just meh.com
Automatically render image URLs as images
If your URL ends with a recognizable image format Mehdown with automatically convert it to an image (instead of a text link). Useful for GIFs.
https://media.giphy.com/media/xT1XH0lC7yoLLB1BSM/giphy.gif
Automatic detection of @usernames
Text that looks like a username gets converted to a link for the user’s public profile page.
@shawn
Tables
New in Mehdown 2.0 is support for tables in GitHub Flavored Markdown syntax.
| First Header | Second Header |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Content Cell | Content Cell |
| Content Cell | Content Cell |
| First Header | Second Header |
|---|---|
| Content Cell | Content Cell |
| Content Cell | Content Cell |
Nested Blockquotes
> Blockquotes can be nested...
>> by using additional greater-than signs right next to each other...
> > > or with spaces between arrows.
Blockquotes can be nested…
by using additional greater-than signs right next to each other…
or with spaces between arrows.
Nested Lists
- Create a list by starting a line with `+`, `-`, or `*`
- Sub-lists are made by indenting 2 spaces:
- Lists all the way down.
- Create a list by starting a line with
+,-, or*- Sub-lists are made by indenting 2 spaces:
- Lists all the way down.
- Sub-lists are made by indenting 2 spaces:
Strikethrough
Mehdown support strikethrough using the ~~ syntax.
~~strikethrough~~
strikethrough
Inline Code
If you need a monospaced font without other Mehdown parser features getting in your way Mehdown supports inline and fenced code blocks.
Inline `code` here.
Inline code here.
Fenced Code
If your code needs more than one line use a fenced code block.
```
Fenced
code
here.
```
Fenced
code
here.
Typographic replacements
Mehdown supports fancy double quotes, single quotes, and other typographic replacements.
"Double quotes", 'single quote', (p) +- ... --
“Double quotes”, ‘single quote’, § ± … –
Emoji shortnames
Mehdown supports automatically converting common Emoji :shortnames: to images.
:star: :thumbsup: :heart: :laughing: :astonished:
Unicode Emoji characters
Mehdown supports converting native unicode Emoji characters to images.
Unicode Emoji: 😄.
Unicode Emoji: 
.
ASCII smileys
Mehdown supports converting ASCII smileys to Emoji images.
ASCII smileys: :).
ASCII smileys: 
.
Embeds
Mehdown automatically converts URLs from many popular sites into HTML embeds.
Imgur GIFV
Imgur GIFV URLs are converted to high quality looping GIF videos.
http://i.imgur.com/zvATqgs.gifv
Kickstarter
Kickstarter URLs are converted to campaign previews.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapster/the-classic-daily-deal-site
Reddit permalink URLs are converted to embeddable comment threads.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4iubue/what_websites_have_you_slowly_stopped_visiting/d319219
SoundCloud
SoundCloud URLs are converted to audio players.
https://soundcloud.com/mediocrelabs/meh-we-are-meh
Twitter status URLs are converted to embeddable tweets.
https://twitter.com/WeAreMeh/status/734232328331923456
Vimeo
Vimeo URLs are converted to video players.
https://vimeo.com/117770305
Vine
Vine URLs are converted to video players.
https://vine.co/v/hWZ9mbJZaKE
YouTube
YouTube URLs are converted to video players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVLU3hkp2a4&start=597
Open Source
Mehdown is open source. If you have an idea for a new embed or found a bug you want fixed we’ll take pull requests over on GitHub.
- 22 comments, 27 replies
- Comment
¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ <-- uh oh this guy is more difficult now
Woo! Something happened.
I wish I understood half of this stuff.
@Barney you should demand a purple mehdown parser widget thingy to make up for all the rest being too technical for us (i.e. i didnt get most either)
@mollama That’s easy for you to say.
You mean I no longer have to type
…all the time!? Ahhhh…Keep up the good work!
–
oh my what is happening here
@shawn ok fair point
Neat.
@dave everything is coming up Dave.
@dave You weren’t ‘dave bug’ at woot for no reason!
@dave Amazing.
I appreciate you and all the work you do. I understand pretty much none of it, but I appreciate you all the same.
Lookin’ good!
@jjohns71
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@carl669 Doh!
The forum is feeling more and more like Slack. And I mean that in a very complimentary way. I
Slack.
@mikey
@mikey @thismyusername Hail Bob!
@joelmw @thismyusername Dobbs and his Tunnels were my first, extremely confusing introduction to internet porn. That combined with my penchant for Piers Anthony novels meant a lot of deprogramming once high school rolled around.
@mikey I don’t really know much about the tunnels. I worked and went to school (Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, if it matters; but it was a liberal arts university) with a guy who, when I caught up with him later, was always citing The Church of the SubGenius material (needless to say, he had long since abandoned the conservative religion we both grew up in). He kind of got off of that kick, but last year he sent me his copy of some kind of SubGenius bible or something like that (he gave away most of his stuff and was wandering the country). It’s interesting and amusing bullshit; fun to dig around in every now and then.
We didn’t have the internet when I was in high school (there was an ARPANET out there somewhere), so, alas, no internet porn either, not even the mostly unconfusing kind. I had (have remnants still of) fundamentalist religion to be deprogrammed from. Bet I’m more fucked up than you.
][1]
@metageist This is awesome and all–very awesome, greatly amusing–but Legolas would never pronounce “gif” “jif.” I imagine that’s the only way it works though. “Gackass.” I love that. “Jondor.”
@joelmw Jondor makes me giggle every time heh
Good stuff. But you wanna know what grinds my gears? I’m telling you anyway. It’s the way our posts get interpreted. For instance in this case, I’m told you posted about a Kickstarter, which, sure, you technically did. Just like I sometimes include a video. Or a picture. But that’s really not the point of the post. I wanted to throw some money at a Kickstarter and, okay, yeah, what I discovered here was cool, but it was also on one level disappointing. Don’t you know how much we want to give you our money, goddamnit?!
@joelmw wait a minute. i thought it was:
@joelmw Interesting… when I first saw the post, I too was looking for a kickstarter and was confuzled by the lack of a way to pledge money.
But then, I still have regrets about seeing the meh kickstarter and saying, “Oh cool! I’ll back this later,” and setting a reminder, followed by not checking email and thus missing the damn thing. At least I was able to get a K t-shirt.
Wasn’t there some way to search and insert gifs in-line? (as you are typing the post) Maybe it was VMP preview only. Maybe I dreamt it…
@medz did you mean emots?
maybe you are thinking of the gboard.
@medz Not exactly — was never a part of the forum software, but a suggested browser extension by @dave in this post.
@brhfl ah, that was probably it. I remember trying it, but i don’t recall installing the extension.
@thismyusername @brhfl @medz
/giphyMehdown 2.1 now supports a subset of BBCode.
Earlier today, poor @mick copied and pasted some BBCode from giphy.com which didn’t render as expected. @thumperchick fixed it after @pavlov provided an example. @sammydog01 helpfully pointed out that if you use the direct link things render find.
@jbartus suggested that “Mehdown might benefit from recognition of the most common BBCode tags” which I agreed with. So, here we are…
@shawn hooray I contributed.
Here’s a BBCode wrapped celebration!
This is not a Mehdown thing but because I’ve had to figure it out a couple times I’m documenting it here. To do a linked image:
which gets you this:
As long as this thread’s bumped, general question: when you developed the forum part of the Mediocre storefront package, what led you to use Markdown as (the basis of) the markup language, vs. BBCode or similar? Markdown’s main selling point, at least in its original specification, was that it was markup that was still reasonably readable if you were reading the plain text; but in current use, users are mainly going to see the plain text only when writing or editing their own posts. Was it out of familiarity from sites that already use it, like Stack Overflow and Reddit?
I know I’m asking questions about something that was decided circa 7 years ago and for nothing but the sake of my own curiosity, but I do find this sort of thing interesting.
@shawn
Nested lists is broken.