title: Markdown Encoding
role: manual
tags: #api #manual #markdown #reference #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001004051200 00001012920500
backward: 00001004051200 00001012920500
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20221107183011
forward: 00001007000000 00001007030100 00001007030200 00001007030700 00001007030800 00001007030900 00001007031000 00001007031300 00001007031400 00001007040100 00001007040200 00001008000000 00001008010800
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20260701174230
published: 20260701174230
visibility: public

A zettel representation that attempts to recreate the zettel as [Markdown](00001008010800).
This is useful for converting [other markup languages](00001008000000) (e.g. [Zettelmarkup](00001007000000)) to Markdown.

If transferred via HTTP, the content type is `text/markdown`.

Please note that many Zettelmarkup elements cannot be encoded in [Extended CommonMark](00001008010800).
Examples include:

* [Description lists](00001007030100)
* [Verse blocks](00001007030700)
* [Comment blocks](00001007030900) (and inline comments)
* [Evaluation blocks](00001007031300)
* [Math-mode blocks](00001007031400)
* Most [literal-like formatting](00001007040200) (except literal text and code spans)

Some elements are subject to additional restrictions.
For example:

* [Quotation lists](00001007030200) are only supported as top-level elements.
* All cells in a [table](00001007031000) column must use the same alignment.
* [Region block](00001007030800) attributes and the optional attribution are omitted.
* Attributes of all [text formatting](00001007040100) elements are omitted.
  For all elements other than emphasis, deletion, quotation, and inline span, the corresponding HTML elements are used for encoding.

Restricted and unsupported elements are omitted from the output.

In the future, omitted elements may be represented as HTML-like comments.