Apache Allura™

Allura's markdown editor has been completely replaced. Previously a simple textarea with limited assistance, it now runs the SimpleMDE Markdown Editor and includes live syntax highlighting and a helpful toolbar. It will be included in the next release of Allura, or is available now by using the latest code from git.

Markdown is a core part of Allura and is used in every text area, including tickets, wiki pages, commenting, etc. Markdown makes it easy to do simple formatting of your text, but not everyone is familiar with it. The existing formatting help and preview mode was helpful, but we wanted to do more.

The new editor's live syntax highlighting makes it really easy to get an idea of what your text is going to look like and avoid formatting mistakes. The preview mode is still there to show you an exact rendering of the formatting. And then the toolbar makes common formatting operations very easy. It's a time saver and allows people new to Markdown to format their text without reading the comprehensive formatting reference page.