View source for Markdown reference guide

Diaspora supports a number of ways to format messages. These are basically a part of the description language [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown Markdown].

== Paragraphs ==

Paragraphs are separated by blank lines.

<pre>This is one paragraph.

This is another.</pre>
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.

<pre>Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I am very bad at poetry.</pre>
Indenting the lines of a paragraph by four spaces will result in a block of pre-formatted text, which is handy for code samples.

<pre>Hey guys, look at my code!

    10 PRINT &quot;HELLO&quot;
    20 GOTO 10</pre>

== Text formatting ==

<pre>*Italic Text*</pre>
becomes &quot;''Italic Text''&quot;.

<pre>**Bold Text**</pre>
becomes &quot;'''Bold Text'''&quot;.

<pre>***Bold Italic Text***</pre>
becomes &quot;'''''Bold Italic Text'''''&quot;.

Similarly, we can also use &quot;_&quot;:

<pre>___Bold Italic Text___</pre>
This allows for nesting:

<pre>_Italic **Bold** Text_</pre>
becomes &quot;''Italic '''Bold''' Text''&quot;.

If needed, a &quot;*&quot; or &quot;_&quot; inside the text can be escaped with the &quot;\&quot; character:

<pre>__Use Two \_ for Bold Text__</pre>
becomes &quot;'''Use Two _ for Bold Text'''&quot;. Of course, this can also be used to prevent formatting:

<pre>\_Italic_ \**Bold**</pre>
becomes &quot;_Italic_ *''Bold''*&quot;.

== 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

<pre>[Official Website](http://example.org)</pre>
is [http://example.org 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:

<pre>![Image title](http://example.org/image.jpg)</pre>
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 

<pre>[![](https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/skins/common/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png)](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki)</pre>

If you are federating with diaspora compatible systems be aware that image links may not be supported on all platforms. 

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