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Awesome idea, but it's already been done: http://gist.io/
Wow, how did I not know that?!

Well, time for mkdown to pivot and rebrand as "gist.io but without serifs."

Seriously though, looks like they did a great job.

I dig your mkdown design, it's beautiful. Cheers!
It's nice that mkdown.com doesn't require JavaScript
why is that nice? Isn't that like saying, "it's nice because it works on an EGA monitor"? javascript is a much as part of "the web" as html.
1) I don't have enough CPU and memory to run everyone's JavaScript in hundreds of tabs

2) JavaScript is an additional vector for exploits

3) Wayback Machine can't archive and render most JavaScript-only content

4) Most search engines besides Google can't index JavaScript-only content

there are trivial ways around all of these, except the first one and that's just ridiculous anyway.
compared to gist.io, I like mkdown style better.

Can we have custom title too? this gist[1] titled "Learning Haskell" but in mkdown[2] it just say "Gist 8739525" in it's title.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/bitemyapp/8739525

[2]: http://www.mkdown.com/8739525

Would grabbing the first header work for you? For the introductory post that would be perfect. http://www.mkdown.com/8485599
This seems like a good option for most gists, but for parent's specific use case it would just say "Primary course".

(This seems like more of a problem with the specific gist rather than with your idea.)

"Learning Haskell" is filled in the description of the gist. Descriptions can be fairly lengthy and not always suitable as titles. However, I think it would be awesome to support metadata in a form like in Jekyll posts or something similar.
I was going to say the same thing. Something about the typography on mkdown is more visually appealing.
I much prefer mkdown's styling, but I think the initial fade-in is unnecessary.
What about different themes? URLs would be easy still:

mkdown.com/abc123?theme=light or mkdown.com/abc123/light

Yeah, I like that, would be cool. Thanks!
+1 for that request; specifically (even a simple variation on the current one) where the type was a fixed-width font.
I like the non-querystring one (the latter). Even though it might be less technically correct it's more aesthetically pleasing.
What about light.mkdown.com/abc123 ?
I prefer Mkdown's look, but I think a slightly wider text area would improve on it. It seems a little too narrow compared to gist.io.

Ordered lists seem to be missing by the way.

The seem to be working for me: http://www.mkdown.com/a712c1ee8c3bf8375720

Mind giving me a link to what you're looking at?

The enumerators seem to be missing on Firefox and IE. Working correctly on Safari and Chrome.

Edit: IE8, did not test with a more recent version.

I have already found a differentiator: mkdown supports private gists, which is a boon for me.
FWIW, I like yours a lot more.
Doesn't matter. You don't have to be always original all the time. It's a really useful project, bookmarked.
gist.io seems broken, just tried it ,doesnt work with my gists.

gist.io/3d0b9deab6f5969c354b

mkdown does private. Gist.io does not support private. +1 for mkdown!
Should at least try to handle code...

http://www.mkdown.com/9382108

Also, mkdown.com fails (without www. subdomain)

Yeah, maybe for v2. The goal of this was to elegantly share .md files (hence the name), so other file types are outside the scope of what I wanted to build.

re:www, it's working on my end: http://cl.ly/image/371J2a1Z2F1s. But I'll investigate.

I don't think parent is talking about other file types exactly, but rather that on github itself, you can have code blocks within your .md that get syntax highlighted. Which, for some people, is a pretty key feature of github markdown.

On yours, as in parent's example, the code blocks don't even get put in a `<pre>`, which would be the minimal 'right thing' if you're not going to do syntax highlighting.

(Of course, yes, syntax highlighting code blocks within .md is pretty much going to use the same logic as handling other file types, it's true).

It looks like he just fed it a plain python gist, no Markdown, no nothing. On the site it says the service can be used "to elegantly share gists written in Markdown", so I don't know why he would expect that to work.

I guess a clear error message would be helpful, but then you would either have to rely on everyone using standard file endings, or do some pretty fancy (and unreliable) parsing to determine if it's actually Markdown.

Fenced code blocks do come through as expected — complete with syntax highlighting. Well done!

One suggestion though: I expect my code blocks to not wrap — they’re in <pre> tags, after all. The stylesheet should have them rendered either with horizontal scrolling, or with overflow.

Compare e.g. http://gist.io/11118629 with http://www.mkdown.com/11118629

Although http://gist.io has this already, I think I like mkdown's CSS a little better (though there doesn't seem to be <code> styling as of yet). In any case, great work!
I opened it and thought that pg would approve of the narrow column [0]. Then I looked who made it and saw that it's a founder of one of the best examples of YC (not just companies that are doing well but seem philosophically aligned with YC).

Edit: I was wrong, SeatGeek didn't go through YC. But the company is certainly well-liked around here, partly because of their open source: https://github.com/seatgeek/soulmate

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/gfaq.html (last question)

SeatGeek actually didn't go through YC. But thanks very much for the kind thoughts, appreciate it.
Love it. One thing I miss from GitHub's native UI, functionally, is the ability to link to headings. I feel like that should be preserved.

Also, a light theme alternative would be nice.

when displaying Go lang code it's look weird ( https://db.tt/O4Jbuqzv ). not all code wrap in code tag. mkdown.com/41ec9725ebee05370e58

btw, i love that sintax highlighting. good job!

Currently only supports markdown files, if that was a markdown file with the code in a fenced code block it would work.
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I was hoping this was a simplified Makefile format.
Does it have to be limited to using a gist? Would it be possible to pass in any url to just raw markdown and have that parsed (i.e. like raw.github.com)

Great work though - I wish I saw this last week while showing markdown to others for the first time.

Unrelated to gists, but I hacked up http://markdownshare.com/ a while back.

It allows quick & easy sharing of markdown text, and you can host your own instance if you wish.

Can this or any of the other similar renderers be hosted on github as a project page?
Any such thing allowing to use LaTeX math formulae and citations?