I use a variation of Markdown for writing documentation and when commenting code written in Retro. The syntax is described below.



Headings

Headings start with one or more number (#) signs. The number of number signs should correspond to the heading level.

# Heading 1 ## Heading 2 ### Heading 3 #### Heading 4

My Markdown does not support the alternate underline format for headings.



To create paragraphs, use a blank line to separate one or more lines of text.

Do not add spaces or tabs at the start of a paragraph as this may cause the Markdown tools to interpret the line improperly.

Line breaks are entered at the end of each line.

Emphasis

Bold

To make text bold, surround it with asterisks.

The *bold* word.

Italic

To make text italic, surround it with front slashes.

The /italic words/.

Underline

To underline text, surround it with underscores.

Underline _some text_.



Horizontal rules can be inserted by starting a line with a sequence of four or more dashes (-) or four or more alternating dash and plus (-+-+) characters.

----

Lists

Lists start with a - or *, followed by a space, then the item text. Additionally, nested lists starting with two spaces before the list marker can be used.

- this is a list item - so is this

  - this will be indented   - likewise

- back to the standard level

Code



Code blocks start and end with ~~~ on a line by themselves.

Sum the values.

~~~ { #10 #20 #13 #4 #22 } #0 [ + ] a:reduce ~~~

You can also denote code by starting the line with four spaces.

    This line will be treated as code.



Unit testing blocks start and end with on a line by themselves.

``` { #10 #20 #13 #4 #22 } #0 [ + ] a:reduce ```



To mark a sequence as inline code, surround it with backticks.

For instance, look at the value in `Compiler` to see if the colon compiler is active.

Escaping

You can preceed a character with a backslash () to have it not be processed as a Markdown element.