Additional Markdown Support

[crxtrdude]

Hey, I've been contacting from the email regarding helping with some things regarding markdown support.

Here's what I've seen that MarkdownSharp has been missing so far that is supported by Day One:

• Auto linked url
• Tables
• Superscript using ^
• GFM feature: The ability to have _ like wow_great_stuff
• Footnotes
• ~~ strikethrough

They are supported because apparently Day One adapted the Github Flavored Markdown.

I've actually just made some change on MarkdownSharp to support the ~~ styled strikethrough and I don't know if it's successful yet because I want to implement it the app itself directly. I want to compile Journaley, but I don't know the requirements and what to do to add them.

BTW, I use VS Express 2012 and I didn't download the other dependencies other than MarkdownSharp, which i forked from the original Google Code site.

[sguergachi]

I don't think we will be making a fork of MarkdownSharp to implement additions, if that's what you're suggesting. I would rather those changes be made directly to the MarkdownSharp project and for us to use that. We can't properly maintain a fork to MarkdownSharp, so I recommend you make this feature request to them.

[crxtrdude]

Unfortunately MarkdownSharp isn't really as maintained as it stands. The project was originally in Google Code and so far, the guys at Stack Overflow (the guys who developed MarkdownSharp) hadn't ported it out of some other places like Github after Google Code archived. The NuGet package isn't even maintained. I actually forked the Google Code over to Github and added my edits to add the features that it needs. I'm learning how to use the regex now to do so.

Another way instead of using MarkdownSharp in order to implement these is by using another more actively maintained Markdown library (Sundown.NET or Moonshine), which I'm not sure if you guys have a priority to do so.

[crxtrdude]

Sorry, pushed the wrong button

And, then there's this

[sguergachi]

"MoonShine is at least 20x faster than MarkdownSharp when run against MarkdownSharp's own benchmark app." https://github.com/brandonc/moonshine

That's intriguing, only problem is that these projects don't seem to be anymore actively developed than MarkdownSharp, last commit was around 3 to 4 years ago.

We would get additional markdown features and speed which is a good enhancement. So like that idea, but it all depends on @yyoon to look into it when he gets the chance in terms of implementation.

But for now this is a low priority.

[crxtrdude]

I got what you mean. Thanks for understanding

[yyoon]

If the alternative libraries are better, then I'm totally fine with replacing the Markdown library.
@crxtrdude Do they already provide the GFM features that you wanted?

Alternatively, since MarkdownSharp has been working fine, we could import the latest source from GoogleCode and modify on our own. It will give us more control and also make our collaboration easier.

@sguergachi I agree that this is a low priority task, but I'm willing to spend some time first to make it easier for @crxtrdude to contribute. What do you think?

[sguergachi]

@yyoon It would be great if @crxtrdude contributed, so yes definitely. But I would rather we use a different library than maintain a fork of one, since it becomes our responsibility to fix anything that might break in the library rather than the library owner. If you don't think this would be a problem, than do whatever you think is best.

[crxtrdude]

@yyoon, i sent you an email. I'll just say it again here though, i don't mind putting the effort on things, as long as the project would become better for everyone.

I'm now starting to test other markdown engines, specifically MarkdownDeep, more details on the email i sent. There are issues though, but I'll still check the other ones, especially the Nuget ones. I'll be posting my findings whn I've done the tinkering. It's alright if you guys aren't going to check all of them, I'll do the heavywork for this one, since you got better things to do for the project. If i hit some snags, i'll tell you guys as well.

[crxtrdude]

PR'd #129 to replace MarkdownSharp engine with MarkdownDeep.net as well as some fixes for the implementation.

[yyoon]

We also need to update the LICENSE file, and the About dialog to reflect the Markdown library change.