---
title: Home
in_menu: true
sort_info: 1
---
## Overview

If you want to get started with kramdown, have a look at the [installation page](installation.html)
to see how you can install it on your system. Then look through the
[documentation](documentation.html) for finding information about how to actually use kramdown and
its parsers/converters. The [syntax page](syntax.html) provides a detailed description of the
superset of Markdown which kramdown supports.

{tikz:: path: overview.png
img_attr: {style: 'background:transparent'}
libraries: [mindmap, trees, arrows]
transparent: true
resolution: 300 100
opts: |
  mindmap, concept color=black, text=white,
  root concept/.append style={font=\Large},
  level 1 concept/.append style={font=\Large, minimum size=2.6cm},
  level 2 concept/.append style={font=\Large},
}
\node[concept, font=\Large] (lib) {kramdown's internal representation}
  child[concept color=orange, grow=140, ->] {node[concept] (i-kramdown) {kramdown}}
  child[concept color=orange, grow=180] {node[concept] (i-html) {HTML}}
  child[concept color=orange, grow=220] {node[concept] (i-markdown) {Markdown}}
  child[concept color=green!50!black, grow=40] {node[concept] (o-html) {HTML}}
  child[concept color=green!50!black, grow=0] {node[concept] (o-kramdown) {kramdown}}
  child[concept color=green!50!black, grow=-40] {
    node[concept] (o-latex) {\LaTeX}
    child[grow=0] {
      node[concept] (o-latex-pdf) {PDF}
    }
  }
  child[concept color=green!50!black, grow=-40] {node[concept] {\LaTeX}}
;
\draw [dash pattern=on 0pt off 2pt,line width=5pt,arrows=-angle 60,shorten >=15pt,shorten <=10pt,color=orange]
   (i-kramdown) edge(lib)
   (i-markdown) edge(lib)
   (i-html) edge (lib);
\draw [dash pattern=on 0pt off 2pt,line width=5pt,arrows=-angle 60,shorten >=10pt,shorten <=15pt,color=green!50!black]
   (lib) edge(o-html)
   (lib) edge (o-kramdown)
   (lib) edge (o-latex);
{tikz}
{: style="text-align: center"}


## 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
[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 (January 2011), being about 4x
faster than [Maruku] and about 5x faster than [BlueFeather].

<p class="a-center">
The latest version of kramdown is <b>0.13.3</b> and it was released on <b>2011-05-06</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