Support Markdown "stack overflow" style hyperlinks markup

If we're going to allow a special syntax for hyperlinks, how about using a syntax more widely known among Launchpad users, such as MoinMoin or even Markdown?

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> If we're going to allow a special syntax for hyperlinks, how about using
> a syntax more widely known among Launchpad users, such as MoinMoin or
> even Markdown?

The "Stack Overflow" method is simply a minor adaptation of what many people
do in plain-text email and it is as easy to write as it is to read. Wikicode
(at least for any wiki I have seen) isn't. Hence the suggestion.

  --- Mike

It is probably also worth noting that Server Fault and a third incarnation targeted at end-user support will be using the same system. If the popularity of Stack Overflow is any indication, many people will rather quickly be familiar with this mechanism for hyperlinks both within and outside of the LP user base.

Using Wikicode could work, but it'd be (I think) too intrusive in emails. This setup lets the plaintext still go out and be readable/parseable by humans, while the site would just render it with a hyperlink and hide the bracketed notation altogether.

Since AskUbuntu.com is also in the realm of the Stack Exchange platform, more and more Ubuntu users might/will get exposed to Markdown (what powers the" stack overflow style hyperlinks").

This is now partly done in the attached branch.

Still to do:

 * document the flag
 * continue to mark up things Launchpad already recognizes including bugs, branches, etc
 * css for tables
 * as a follow on it might be useful to put them in memcached

also
 * disable linking (or perhaps all markup?) by untrusted users?
 * insert <a rel=nofollow> - but do we really care? the vast majority of content is trustworthy and has useful links, and we have mechanisms for getting rid of spam
 * possibly, css to make things inside

One open question is about how to handle newlines:
 * original markdown ignores single newlines unless they're preceded by two trailing space characters - exactly the sort of significant trailing whitespace that is a pain in the butt in moin
 * github, stackexchange, perhaps others, treat newlines as hard line breaks; this can be accomplished with http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/nl2br

the former is arguably better for incoming email, but even there if it's correctly typed as format flowed we have a chance to detect which newlines are really soft vs hard.

 * rendered html needs to be inserted into edit widgets
 * saving the edit widget needs to get back and insert the rendered html

> * insert <a rel=nofollow> - but do we really care? the vast majority
> of content is trustworthy and has useful links, and we have
> mechanisms for getting rid of spam

I think this is the reason why most content is okay; Launchpad is not
an interesting target for link spam. If we stop adding nofollow to
user-provided links we will become more interesting to spammers.

On 21 November 2011 02:21, Gavin Panella <email address hidden> wrote:
>> * insert <a rel=nofollow> - but do we really care? the vast majority
>>   of content is trustworthy and has useful links, and we have
>>   mechanisms for getting rid of spam
>
> I think this is the reason why most content is okay; Launchpad is not
> an interesting target for link spam. If we stop adding nofollow to
> user-provided links we will become more interesting to spammers.

I had a look at askubuntu, github, some other comparable user content
sites. Most do use nofollow. We don't need any more spam attention.

Performance discussion conclusions:
 * locally measured performance seems at least plausible enough to do a limited beta
 * not worth worrying about doing anything with memcached now

also to do:

 * i'm going to work on a python-markdown extension, which I will send upstream, to add rel=nofollow.
 * markdown by default doesn't linkify urls and we want that
 * we also need to linkify patterns we currently match like 'bug 391780'

r14384 in stable (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/stable/revision/14384) is part of this bug's fix.

https://bugs.qastaging.aunchpad.net/launchpad/ seems to be not responding at the moment.

qa: https://qastaging.launchpad.net/~mbp and https://qastaging.launchpad.net/launchpad are rendering ok, so this hasn't broken anything when the flag is off.

for linkification of bugs - there is a -big- regex to check :) - it
handles all the things e.g. oopses, urls, bugs, etc - have a dig
around the guts, I'm sure you'll find it.

On 28 November 2011 09:44, Robert Collins <email address hidden> wrote:
> for linkification of bugs - there is a -big- regex to check :) - it
> handles all the things e.g. oopses, urls, bugs, etc - have a dig
> around the guts, I'm sure you'll find it.

Yep, I see it. I am planning to add a Launchpad-specific markdown
extension class that if possible applies the same regexp to do the
same transformations.

Any progress on this? We really need markdown for e.g code blocks in FAQ and Question/Answers!

Is this dead? No hope of markdown? Seems sort of way behind for something w/ &copy; 2014 stamped on it...

Any update on this one?

I would love to have Markdown support in Launchpad... As I just wrote in a question [1], commonmark.org provides a nice specification document, so it could be worthy to use this or one of the implementations.

I hope we'll see this feature land soon!

[1] https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/261268

It would be much better if launchpad can support Github style Markdown ability, even a basic markdown support would help to structure the issue description a lot, especially helpful for codes.

Markdown has become the de facto standard, used at for example GitLab, GitHub and Stack Overflow, so it would be great if not only hyperlinks, but the complete Markdown formatting conventions was also adapted for Launchpad itself, and available everywhere. Both in the Bug Description, but also comments, such as this one.

## GitLab
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html

## Stack Overflow
https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help

## GitHub
https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/getting-started-with-writing-and-formatting-on-github/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax

Yes, it would be an excellent feature support for the users/developers if we would like to promote the Launchpad.

I believe we would like to maintain the information/discussion on Launchpad as much as possible. The current bug description / comments are not quite friendly to read for users.

If we can improve the user experience, then I believe it can help us to promote the Launchpad for our external counterparts.