# A general proposal for an extension to the Markdown format aimed at educational purposes

> Sergio Lindau, october 2023

Markdown is a plain text format for writing structured documents, based on
conventions for indicating formatting in email and usenet posts. It was
developed by John Gruber (with help from Aaron Swartz) and released in 2004 in
the form of a syntax description and a Perl script (`Markdown.pl`) for
converting Markdown to HTML.

In the next decade, dozens of implementations were developed in many languages.
Some extended the original Markdown syntax with conventions for footnotes,
tables, and other document elements. Some allowed Markdown documents to be
rendered in formats other than HTML. Websites like Reddit, StackOverflow, and
GitHub had millions of people using Markdown. And Markdown started to be used
beyond the web, to author books, articles, slide shows, letters, and lecture
notes.