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## Overview

kramdown is first and foremost a library for converting text written in a superset of Markdown to
HTML. However, due to its modular architecture it is able to support additional input and output
formats. The following input and output formats are currently supported:

* Input: [kramdown](parser/kramdown.html) (a superset of Markdown)
* Output: [HTML](converter/html.html), [LaTeX](converter/latex.html)


## Usage

The kramdown package provides two ways for using it:

* **As a library**

  kramdown uses basically the same API as [RedCloth], [BlueCloth] and [Maruku]:

      require 'kramdown'

      Kramdown::Document.new(text).to_html
  {: lang='ruby'}

  The second parameter to the `new` call is an options hash for (de)activating certain features. For
  more information have a look at the [API documentation](rdoc/index.html).

* **As an application**

  Together with the library files a binary called `kramdown` is shipped which can be used to convert
  text in any supported format (currently only kramdown syntax) to any supported output format (e.g.
  HTML or LaTeX). It either reads from the files specified as the command line arguments or from the
  standard input. For example:

      kramdown path/to/kramdown/doc/syntax.page


## Tests

kramdown uses various test suites to verify the correct working of the parsers and converters. For
more information, have a look at the [tests document](tests.html).


## Bugs, Forums, Mailing Lists

If you have found a bug, you should [report it here][bug_report]. Also, there are [forums][forum]
and [mailing lists][ml] available if you have any questions!

[bug_report]: http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?atid=28673&group_id=7403&func=browse
[forum]: http://rubyforge.org/forum/?group_id=7403
[ml]: http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=7403


## Thanks

kramdown would not be possible without the prior work of many other people. I want to thank everyone
involved with making Markdown such a nice markup language and especially the developers of other
Markdown implementations because kramdown borrowed many ideas from existing packages.


## Author

* Thomas Leitner
* e-Mail: <t_leitner@gmx.at>
* GPG Key-Id: 0xB2D0A854


[PHP Markdown Extra]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/
[Maruku]:             http://maruku.rubyforge.org
[RedCloth]: http://whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/redcloth/
[BlueCloth]: http://www.deveiate.org/projects/BlueCloth


--- name:intro

## Welcome to the kramdown site

**kramdown** (sic, not Kramdown or KramDown, just kramdown) is a *free* GPL-licensed
[Ruby](http://www.ruby-lang.org) library for parsing and converting a superset of Markdown. It is
completely written in Ruby, supports standard Markdown (with some minor modifications) and various
extensions that have been made popular by the [PHP Markdown Extra] package and [Maruku].

It is probably the fastest pure-Ruby Markdown converter available (February 2010), being about 4.5x
faster than [Maruku] and about 10x faster than [BlueFeather].

<p class="a-center">
The latest version of kramdown is <b>0.6.0</b> and it was released on <b>2010-04-06</b>.
</p>

[PHP Markdown Extra]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/
[Maruku]: http://maruku.rubyforge.org
[BlueFeather]: http://ruby.morphball.net/bluefeather/index_en.html