New Markdown Authoring Environment

As Autumn brings more inclement weather, we turn from undertaking walks to more recording and publishing of walks and further development on the Walks sites and the pipelines that support them.

One area exploited during the previous winter was to integrate a Markdown workflow where authoring of walk details move from an XML based authoring environment to markdown - which was a lot easier and quicker to author. The original method used the WalkML markup language which was all well and good in its day but as times change it really is now time to move on. Therefore implementing a Markdown workflow into the existing XSLT pipelines was the way forward. No more manually coding XML data in Notepad++, moving to markdown in the same environment using the Markdown plugin. This worked ok but we always felt it could be improved, and make it easier to author.

Therefore we have created a browser baser dedicated Griffmonster Walks Markdown authoring evenironemnt tailored for our own use. This enables:

• Toolbar to auto apply styles
• Load the MD template for a new walk
• Load existing files for editing
• Auto saving work so nothing is lost
• Browser based incorrect spelling highlighter
• Validation script to assess that it will run through the xslt pipeline seamlessly
• Formatted panel to view the marked data on-the-fly

Not only has this speeded up delivery of our own walks, but in the past I have had a few requests from other potential authors who wanted to contribute who did not want to learn the XML based coding restrictions. This will make this a whole lot easier for contributors.

This is all looking very promising and future updates may include:

• Add in methods to record walk metadata - this is currently manually added to the GPX.
• Allowance of using common data and linking this into the markdown - this will then get picked up by the xslt pipeline
• Develop an XSLT to convert the original walkML data to markdown