bedeviled mojo slop

Go read about the Markdown tool. If you're too lazy to click, here's the skinny.

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).

Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML. See the Syntax page for details pertaining to Markdown’s formatting syntax.

So, I just had to have a plugin for blojsom because damnit, well, they included hooks for blosxom and MovableType. Anyhooooo, long story short is that I decided not to go down the road of textile4j. Honestly, the way I wrote the Markdown plugin may be a generic way to hook Textile into blojsom. But anyway...

So, basically what the MarkdownPlugin for blojsom does is to use Runtime.exec() to call out to Perl. It passes the description on the output stream, closes it, and gets the Markdown'd goodness back on the input stream from the exec'd Process. Brilliant! This means all the coding is done and upgrades are as simple as dropping in a new Markdown.pl file. It works like a champ. Don't believe me? Here's the Boo ya! screenshot.

Boo ya!

Oh, and this also means that neither Mark or myself will be starting the Markdown4J project