Skip to content

FAQ

Why?

Because I like to code my way around problems. See Here for a better explanation

Whats in a Name?

Originally, Dans Markup Converter (DMC). Yep, the chance to tell people to run DMC was too good to miss. However, including your name in something is a bit UMOA (Up My Own Arse).

Anything that involves the full term MarkDown, seems to have negative connotation. As a general marking philosophy, it how well you have met the criteria, not penalising the making mistakes. marking down.

  • You are ABLE to MARK things in MARKdown
  • We can REuse templates.

Backronyms are a good thing....

Do I have to do the whole Virtualenv thing.

No.

If you are just using the software, its probably not necessary. Under some situations, it can also help us install things locally on windows, without needing admin permissions.

However, If you are developing then it tends to be a very good idea though. You only have to go through the hell of unmet dependencies when you move machines once, to see why. I suggest it so it becomes Muscle memory.

The folks at Flask have a nice discussion of the topic

You know the Markdown parser is Insecure?

Yep. I know we can do some interesting things with the markdown render system, like XSS.

However, So is Word / Excel / PDF etc., I can stick a Macro in a document that will P0wn your system.

We are generating the docs we distribute, so we have control over what is put in them. If it was a live system, where other people could add input, I wouldn't forget RULE 1

Why the command line?

Simple answer, I don't like writing GUI's. Also typing a few commands seems much more efficient than lots of clicking too.

Note

I Had considered a web interface. But that leads to a whole world of data govenance pain. Perhaps one day we can write it as a Moodle (or Aula) plugin.

There is no reason there cant be one, feel free put one together and submit a pull request.

Why Markdown, and not

A few reasons.

  1. I teach in computing, and encourage the students to use GitHub, which will render Markdown nicely in the web interface. It seemed like a good idea to reinforce this good practice.
  2. Its got a nice clean syntax, and as text can be edited on just about anything.
  3. It has support for things like Maths, and Code.

Pink Lady Mode?

I Like Puns, I Like obscure movie references, (I don't particularly like the movie). And it seemed to fit.