Dan Glegg just twittered about adding Markdown as a service under OS X and that got me googling. Apparently you can do this easily using the HumaneText.service.

In fact, I just wrote this post using Markdown with TextMate's blogging bundle and then converted it to XHTML strict using the ⌘ ⇧ { keyboard shortcut for the HumaneText.service.

Here’s what the source looks like:

[Dan Glegg][dg] just twittered about adding [Markdown][1]
 as a service under OS X and that got me googling. Apparently you can
 do this easily using the [HumaneText.service][2].

[dg]: http://twitter.com/angryamoeba
[1]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/index.text
[2]: http://gu.st/proj/HumaneText.service/

In fact, I just wrote this post using Markdown with [TextMate][tm]
’s blogging bundle and then converted it to XHTML strict using the
⌘ ⇧ { keyboard shortcut for the HumaneText.service.

[tm]: http://macromates.com/

I noticed that Textmate’s own Markdown preview strips out reference links from Markdown code listings. HumaneText.service handles them properly. Also, Wordpress is escaping some of the characters in the code listing so it looks less legible than the original version (although the Command and Shift characters were always escaped.)

Neat stuff — thanks, Dan!

The Markdown article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.