Github uses its own version of Markdown to interpret and parse (.md) files, known as "GitHub Flavored Markdown" (GFM). It is available across the Github system wherever a document is present: wiki pages, project reference files and project descriptions, issues tracking, comments, and pull requests. You can learn more about the GFM implementation at Github Markups.
If you're not yet familiar with Markdown, take a look at some Markdown Basics (search for it on Google). By knowing the basics about Markdown it will make a lot more sense why the GFM rendering process differs from the Standard Markdown. Fundamentally, the GFM is tailored for Github to allow the documents to serve to a higher purposed within Github scope other than simply disclose information. The GFM adds key functionalities such as: pull request integration, SHA-1 Conversion, task lists, emoji, named anchors, CDN caching for images, autolinking etc.
An important remark for anyone writing documentation inside Github projects: the GFM render also accepts a handfull of HTML TAGS and render them properly, but not before aggressively sanitize them to remove things such as: scripts tags, (some) inline-styles, classes and id attributes. You can take a look at the sanitization filter for the full whitelisted HTML.
My recommendation for anyone trying to make the best out of the GFM is to fell free to use Markdown, HTML Tags or both at same time. Try it and see for yourself. Sure enough you will find situations in which HTML Tags will be much better fit than the equivalent Markdown element and vice-versa (this entire set of documents are great example of such combination).
Express your freedom, fell free to learn from this set of documents and have a great writting experience. That's exactly why I decided to make it as a set of .md files instead of a Wiki page.
Have fun.
Julio Marchi © 😎
Twitter: @MrMarchi
- Line Breaks and Paragraphs
- Headers
- Content Elements (Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, etc.)
- Unicode Characters and HTML entities
Except where otherwise noted, content on this document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Provided by Julio Marchi