Markdown reference guide
Diaspora supports a number of ways to format messages. These are basically a part of the description language Markdown.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are separated by blank lines.
This is one paragraph. This is another.
Sometimes the line breaks are important, such as when you're entering poetry. To do this, add two spaces to the end of each line.
Roses are red. Violets are blue. I am very bad at poetry.
Indenting the lines of a paragraph by four spaces will result in a block of pre-formatted text, which is handy for code samples.
Hey guys, look at my code!
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
Text formatting
Use asterisks or underscores to make emphasise text:
*Italic Text* or _Italic Text_
becomes "Italic Text".
**Bold Text** or __Bold Text__
becomes "Bold Text".
***Bold Italic Text*** or ___Bold Italic Text___
becomes "Bold Italic Text".
This allows for nesting:
_Italic **Bold** Text_
becomes "Italic Bold Text".
If needed, a "*" or "_" in your text can be escaped with the "\" character:
__Use Two \_ for Bold Text__
becomes "Use Two _ for Bold Text". Of course, this can be used to prevent formatting:
\_Italic_ \*\*Bold**
becomes "_Italic_ **Bold**".
Use tildes to strike through characters:
~~Strikethrough~~
becomes "Strikethrough".
Links
Full URLs, for example http://example.org , are automatically converted into links. This also works for ftp:// like ftp://example.org . Furthermore, everything starting with www. is converted into a link, for example www.example.org.
For more control, the Markdown syntax also allows the link to be named. For example
[Official Website](http://example.org)
is Official Website. Key point: square brackets before round.
Images
To embed an image in a post, use the above syntax with an exclamation mark at the beginning:
For this to work, the URL needs to be a direct link to a valid image file (ending in .jpg, .gif, etc), not to a web page containing an image.
Image Links
By combining the Link and Image syntax you can create an Image Link. For example
[](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki)
If you are federating with diaspora compatible systems be aware that image links may not be supported on all platforms.