Markdown format for wiki module?

Markdown format for wiki module?

by Françoise Blin -
Number of replies: 4

I was wondering if there is any plan of including the markdown format in the wiki module?

Or the wiki format (as opposed to the wiki-like format) in other activities (such as forums and glossary)?

I am a bit concerned about the possible confusion if students need to use a different syntax depending on the activity they do.

In our university, the HTML editor has been disabled (but I won't go into the reasons, they are pretty sound), so the HTML format is not the most convenient.

Françoise

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In reply to Françoise Blin

Re: Markdown format for wiki module?

by Mike Churchward -
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Hmmm.

I wasn't actually aware of the 'markdown' format. I suppose it could be incorporated …

If you use the 'No HTML' setting for the wikis, it won't use the HTML editor, but most of the HTML tags Moodle uses can still be coded manually into the text and they will work. This probably means that the Markdown format would mostly work anyway.

But, wikis are really meant to be used with wiki format. You could always use the 'wiki-like' format in the other activities. It should be the same for formatting - just won't have wiki links.

mike

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Re: Markdown format for wiki module?

by Françoise Blin -
As far as I understand it, the wiki-like format is actually quite different from the wiki format (as in your wiki module).

The issue arose because I realised that when my students were using the moodle auto-format to build a glossary, which I use a lot (I teach French for Science and Technology...), exporting the glossary was a nightmare as the XML file did not include paragraph tags.

The markdown format looks very appealing, and can be used in most moodle activities. I don't think that my students will have any problem learning it. And no more need to type in html tags, which really slows down the writing.

So I am thinking of pushing them to use the markdown format almost everywhere. But then, when it comes to the wikis, this means having to learn a new format again. Mind you, it may not be a huge problem, but it could be a bit confusing, if not overwhelming for first year students (although the students come to me to learn French, they come out of my course fluent in html, wiki and markdown...).

Perhaps the solution would be to replace the wiki-like format by the proper wiki format in all activities...

In any case, this will be an on-going issue in our place... It will be interesting to see which format the whole university adopts for communicating via moodle.

Françoise

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Re: Markdown format for wiki module?

by David Scotson -

Does anyone know if the formatting module in the current wiki is pluggable. I'd be really interested in adding Markdown if it is.

Also here are some links related to this discussion:

A wiki (written in ruby) called instiki that allows markdown as a formatting option:

http://instiki.nextangle.com:3000/instiki/show/Markup+Languages

It also allows textile (which is the main inspiration for the Wiki-like format and rdoc, a ruby code documentation format.

There is also a PEAR library in PHP for parsing Wiki Text:

http://wiki.ciaweb.net/yawiki/index.php?area=Text_Wiki

This could be easily slotted into Moodle, everywhere that Markdown currently is. Unfortunately, while it is more truely wiki-like, there is no actual standard for Wiki markup so it probably differs in a few places from the markup in the actual Wiki.

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Re: Markdown format for wiki module?

by Martin Dougiamas -
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I would love to see the Wiki offer exactly the same options for formatting as the standard Moodle list (Markdown, Moodle format, HTML, etc)
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