% Discount -- a C implementation of the Markdown markup language -- the command line interface
% Jessica L. Parsons (orc@pell.portland.or.us)
% 
<style type="text/css">
table { border: 1px solid grey; }
td { border-top: 1px solid black; }
td+td { border-left: 1px solid grey; }
th+th { border-left: 1px solid grey; }
div.tincup {
width: 30%;
margin: 0 8px 0 8px;
padding: 6px;
border: 1px solid grey;
background-color: #BBD2FF;
font-size: 75%;
float: right;
clear: right;
}
</style>

#Discount

###The `markdown` program

The `markdown` program is a trivial compiler that reads in a markdown
file and writes out a html document or -- if you use the `-d` flag --
an outline showing the parse tree.   It does have a few options;

`-d`
:   is, as previously mentioned, the flag that makes markdown
    produce a parse tree instead of a html document.
`-F <flags>`
:   sets various [flags] that change
    how markdown works.  The flags argument is a somewhat less
    than obvious bitmask -- for example, `-F 0x4` tells `markdown`
    to **not** do the [smartypants][] translations on the output.
    (there are cases -- like running the [test suite][] -- where
    this is a useful feature.)
`-f <flags>`
:   sets various [flags] that change how markdown works.
    Unlike `-F`, these are the names of the flags (you can get
    a list of the supported flags with the `-f?` option; supported
    flags + synonyms with `-Vf?` ) optionally
    prefixed with `no` or `-` to turn them off.
    To reuse the example to disable [smartypants][], you'd do `-f nopants`
    ("pants" is a synonym for "smarty" == smartypants.)
`-o file`
:   tells markdown to write the output to *`file`*
`-V`
:   tells you a markdown version number and how the package
    was configured.   For example

        $ markdown -V
        markdown: discount 2.2.2 TAB=8 DEBUG

    tells you that this is markdown 2.2.2, and that the package
    was configured with support for sensible tabs & debugging
    malloc.
`-VV`
:   is like `-V`, except it also returns the current values of many
    of the flags that can be set with `-f` or `-F`.


[markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown
[syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
[john gruber]: http://daringfireball.net
[annotations]: /~orc/Code/annotations
[smartypants]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
[test suite]: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2006-June/000079.html
[old test suite]: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2004-December/000909.html
[textmate]: http://macromates.com/
[pandoc]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/
[vi]: http://thomer.com/vi/vi.html
[Ryan Tomakyo]: http://tomayko.com/
[rdiscount]: http://tomayko.com/writings/ruby-markdown-libraries-real-cheap-for-you-two-for-price-of-one
[reference dingus]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
[plan9]: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
[PHP markdown extra]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/
[markdown extra definition list]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#def-list
[footnotes]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#footnotes
[Mike Schiraldi]: http://mikeschiraldi.blogspot.com/
[github]: http://github.com/Orc/discount
[discount]: /~orc/Code/discount
[css]: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ 'See this page?  This is how NOT to do styles'
[command-line program]:  program.html
[API]: api.html
[downloads]: downloads.html
[flags]: api.html#flags