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| -rw-r--r-- | _markdown.qmd | 31 |
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diff --git a/_markdown.qmd b/_markdown.qmd index 778bf72..64cff7b 100644 --- a/_markdown.qmd +++ b/_markdown.qmd @@ -1,6 +1,33 @@ -*FIXME: introduce extensions and extension sets (dialects)* +This chapter will provide two analyses +of the markup language Markdown; +first an analysis of a widely used subset of the language +that is relevant for annotation, +and then an analysis of a not yet used subset +proposed specifically for the intent of marking up annotations. -*FIXME: Pick Commonmark as reference dialect* +Ahead of these analyses, +it helps define terminology of "dialect" and "extension": +Markdown is not a single strictly defined language, +but a range of slightly varying languages +all derived from the same slightly ambiguous original specification. +One way to approach this variability, +used among other places in the documentation of the Markdown processor Pandoc +and reused here, +is to call each language variation a "dialect", +and each set of markup patterns not generally agreed on an "extension". + +The first analysis covers the Markdown dialect CommonMark, +chosen both because it is widely used -- +among its users is (with some additional extensions) +the renderers for `README.md` files at Github and Gitlab -- +and because its syntax is thoroughly documented, +separately from implementations of parsers of that dialect. + +The second analysis covers the Markdown extension semantic-markdown, +chosen because it covers semantic text annotation +and, +as far as we are aware, +is the only description for a Markdown extension with this coverage. ## Syntax of Markdown dialect Commonmark |