Markup Formats

About Formats

Dreamwidth supports a handful of different markup formats for user-submitted text like entries and comments. The format ID is stored alongside the text of each item, and it determines how we transform the user's raw text when displaying it on the web.

Some formats have multiple versions — we sometimes want to change how the markup rules work going forward, so we retain the old versions to preserve any content written before the changes took effect.

Some formats also have aliases, either to preserve some existing behavior or as a convenience for requesting the current version of a format. When content is submitted with an aliased format, it gets saved as the canonical ID that the alias currently resolves to.

A subset of formats are marked as "active." Although any format can be used in contexts that accept a raw format ID, the web UI's format selectors only display the active formats. (When editing old content that already uses an inactive format, that format is also included in the UI.)

Contents

Active Formats

html_casual1

The classic default format: uses HTML tags for formatting, but automatically formats paragraphs.

Display Name:

Casual HTML

Features:

@mentions, DW tags, auto linebreaks, auto links

Aliases:
  • html_casual_latest
html_raw0

Normal HTML, plus Dreamwidth's special <user> and <cut> tags. Doesn't automatically format paragraphs, and doesn't support @mentions.

Display Name:

Raw HTML

Features:

DW tags

markdown0

A lightweight markup syntax that automatically formats paragraphs, provides shortcuts for the most common HTML tags, and allows inline HTML for more complex formatting. This implementation uses Perl's Text::Markdown module (which is very close to the original Markdown syntax), plus some DW-specific extensions.

Display Name:

Markdown

Features:

Markdown syntax, @mentions, DW tags

Aliases:
  • markdown
  • markdown_latest
rte0

Markup generated by the legacy FCKEditor RTE.

Display Name:

Rich Text Editor

Features:

DW tags, auto linebreaks, auto links

Other Formats

html_casual0

An older version of casual HTML that doesn't support @mentions.

Display Name:

Casual HTML (legacy 0)

Features:

DW tags, auto linebreaks, auto links

html_extra_raw

Normal HTML from a feed or some other external source. Doesn't support any special Dreamwidth syntax, including tags like <user>.

Display Name:

Raw HTML (external source)

Features:

none