Markdown and Custom Template Tags

This article is an introduction on how to use markdown syntax within Caveon’s software tools, and harness the power of custom template tags. Markdown allows you to safely add formatting to your content, as well as pictures and video among other media and external resources. 

What is Markdown

The creator of markdown describes it this way:

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

This article is aimed at Caveon software users, not programmers, so we’ll focus on the first component of Markdown: write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format. Caveon software will then convert the Markdown written into a well formatted and safe presentation of content. Documenting all the features and capabilities of Markdown is beyond the scope of this article, so it will instead highlight the most common uses.

Basic Formatting

Headings

To create large text as a heading to a content area, you would format your text using the ‘#’ symbol. To achieve your desired heading size, follow the guide below.

# Very Large Heading Text
## Large Heading Text
### Medium Heading Text

Text Styles

To create italic text, place an asterisk around both sides of the text, and to create bold text, place 2 asterisks around the text. See below.

*This will be italic*
**This will be bold text**
_this will be underlined text_
==this will be highlighted text==
~~this will be strikethrough text~~

Links and Images

Links can be created inside your content, as well as images. Use the format below.

[Link](http://caveon.com) will create a link to caveon.com
![Title](http://url/imagefile.png) will display the image at the specified URL

Tables

You can create tables with pipes | and hyphens -. Hyphens are used to create each column's header, while pipes separate each column. You must include a blank line before your table in order for it to correctly render.  

| First Header | Second Header |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Content Cell | Content Cell |
| Content Cell | Content Cell |

Formatting Reference

Markdown is capable of much more as well. Including, lists, block quotes, and pre-formatted code. For a guide on using the generic markdown language features, visit Commonmark’s helpful Markdown documentation.

Caveon Custom Markdown

On top of the standard markdown language features, Caveon offers several custom enhancements including support for mp3 audio, mp4 video, and iframe content for embedding external resources like surveys or maps.

To embed video files playable by a browser’s built in HTML5 video player, use the syntax below. Notice how the second set of ::: is on its own line. This is critical.

::: html5video https://videofile.mp4
:::

To embed music files playable by a browser’s built in HTML5 audio player, use the syntax below. Notice how the second set of ::: is on its own line. This is critical.

::: html5audio https://audiofile.mp3
:::

To create an iframe of embedded content, use the syntax below. Notice how the second set of ::: is on its own line. This is critical.

::: iframe https://embeddedresource.com
:::

Caveon Markdown Template Tags

Caveon template tags allow you to embed dynamic data inside of a markdown capable area.

Template tags have not reached a proper spec and this article will be updated when they do.