MultiMarkdown, or MMD, is a tool to help turn minimally marked-up plain text into well formatted documents, including HTML, PDF (by way of LaTeX), OPML, or OpenDocument (specifically, Flat OpenDocument or ‘.fodt’, which can in turn be converted into RTF, Microsoft Word, or virtually any other word-processing format).

There are a lot of cheatsheets available , but they are seem to leave off some critical details.  MMD is quite sensitive to syntax mistakes.  Here are some of the ones that have bitten me:

Original Text:

• Test Link
  The is the paragraph’s text.

 

This is the target text.  A simple, unordered list, with a link on the first line and a paragraph of text following the list, indented to match the list’s indentation.  Unfortunately, there are couple of nits that MMD loves to pick, causing this to fail.

MMD format:

- [Test Link](https://www.example.com)
 The is the paragraph’s text.

1. You can use and asterisk, dash or plus as the “bullet”.   I lean towards the dash (-), as there is no visual confusion with the asterisk, when it is used for bold and italic emphasis.
2. The link text “[Test Link]” and the link address “(https://www.example.com)” cannot have a space separating them.
3. Finally, there MUST be two spaces at the end of the line for the following paragraph to be recognized correctly.

 

Here is a series of tests, using the DASH for the bullet and a TAB to indicate the paragraph must be indented.  The only change is the number of spaces after the hyperlink text line.

- [Test Link](https://www.example.com)
        The is the paragraph’s text.  No trailing space
- [Test Link](https://www.example.com) 
        The is the paragraph’s text.  One trailing space
- [Test Link](https://www.example.com)  
        The is the paragraph’s text.  Two trailing spaces
- [Test Link](https://www.example.com)   
        The is the paragraph’s text.  Three trailing spaces

The final result demonstrates the importance of the TWO spaces.

• Test Link The is the paragraph’s text. No trailing space
• Test Link The is the paragraph’s text. One trailing space
• Test Link
  The is the paragraph’s text. Two trailing spaces
• Test Link
  The is the paragraph’s text. Three trailing spaces

 

PS — Another post from the draft folder — this time from 2017.  If I really am going to get back into blogging, MultiMarkdown Syntax will raise its ugly head and lead to more posts like this.