Markdown
Version 1.0.1 - Tue 14 Dec 2004
by John Gruber
http://daringfireball.net/
Introduction
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
Thus, "Markdown" is two things: a plain text markup syntax, and a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text markup to HTML.
Markdown works both as a Movable Type plug-in and as a standalone Perl script -- which means it can also be used as a text filter in BBEdit (or any other application that supporst filters written in Perl).
Full documentation of Markdown's syntax and configuration options is available on the web: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/. (Note: this readme file is formatted in Markdown.)