Bismark

A lightweight markup language, suitable for both shorter and longer texts.

Simple
Typographically sound
Extensible

Bismark is output format agnostic, and should be relatively easy to parse.

It is still in flux and is subject to change. Feedback is welcome.

Inline Elements

Styling

*bold*
_italic_
`verbatim`

bold
italic
verbatim

There's no underline.

By convention, verbatim text is rendered in a monospaced font.

Links

Links are enclosed in angle brackets <…>.

<https://example.com>
<email@example.com>

https://example.com
email@example.com

The link's text comes before its destination.

<Website https://example.com>
<Email address email@example.com>

Website
Email address

The destination is always the last part of the whitespace delimited link. Anything before the destination is the link's text.

Checkboxes

A checkbox is either checked [x] or unchecked [ ].

Todo:
[x] Water the dog
[ ] Feed the plants

Todo:

Water the dog

Feed the plants

_{This example requires a Markdown extension to render correctly.}

Block Elements

Headings

A heading line must start with 1–3 # characters and a space.

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

There are no more levels.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines.

Line breaks within paragraphs are retained unless escaped. Editors and views are expected to use line and word wrap.

Inline styles can span lines within the same paragraph.

The most dangerous thought you can have
as a creative person is to *think you know
what you're doing*.

The most dangerous thought you can have
as a creative person is to think you know
what you're doing.

Lists

Either ordered or unordered.

Nested items must be indented, either with spaces (at least to the leftmost column of the outer item's text) or with tabs (one for each indentation level).

1. Ordered item
   - Unordered item
     - Nested item

Ordered item

Unordered item

Nested item

Block Quotes

A block quote line must start with a > character followed by whitespace.

> Why are you quoting everything I say?

--- Anonymous

Why are you quoting everything I say?

— Anonymous

Verbatim Blocks

A verbatim block is opened and closed with a line starting with ```.

```
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
```

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thematic Breaks

The line must only consist of - and * characters (at least two) and spaces, in any combination.

By convention, it would resemble a dinkus or a horizontal line.

- * -

Other

Beautification

Because typography matters.

... is an ellipsis
-- is an en-dash
--- is an em-dash

… is an ellipsis
– is an en-dash
— is an em-dash

“Smart quotes” may be provided as an option by the renderer.

Escaping

Unintended formatting can be prevented with the escape character \.

The asterisk (\*) and backslash (\\) are fine symbols indeed.
\- This is not a list item.
This \-- is no longer an en-dash.

The asterisk (*) and backslash (\) are fine symbols indeed.
- This is not a list item.
This -- is no longer an en-dash.

By escaping a hyphen within a word, it becomes a non-breaking hyphen.

The next hyphen is non\-breaking.

The next hyphen is non‑breaking.

By escaping a space, it becomes a non-breaking space.

This number and its unit must never be broken up by line wrapping: 100\ km

This number and its unit must never be broken up by line wrapping: 100 km

By escaping a line break, it becomes a non-breaking line break ala Markdown.

This line has a hard line break \
that is ignored.

This line has a hard line break that is ignored.

Any Unicode character may be added using the escape sequence \(…) with the character's hexadecimal Unicode code point.

Nice \(1F44D)

Nice 👍

In memory of Aaron Swartz (atx).

joakim / bismark