What is a MD file
MD files are basically text files. The text inside is written in one of many different dialects of the Markdown development language. They are used to author documentation also in a plain text format, so they can be turned into the HTML format. Furthermore, MD files are used to version control source code because it makes it easy to compare the code to revisions that have been written in human-readable text.
The data inside the MD file is saved in plain text. However, this text can contain inline symbols that indicate how certain parts of the text should be formatted; such as bold, italic, table formatting, and more. The developer of the MD file format, John Gruber, also developed a program using the Perl programming language which allows the easy conversion of MD files in Markdown to HTML. Next to MD, Markdown files can also be saved using the MARKDOWN file extension.
Here's a small, but not exhaustive list of programs that can open MD documents:
- Apple TextEdit (Mac)
- Daring Fireball Markdown (Windows, Mac & Linux)
- GitHUb (Web)
- GNU Emacs (Linux)
- gVim (Windows)
- MacroMates TextMate (Mac & Linux)
- MacVim (Mac)
- Microsoft Notepad (Windows)
- Microsoft WordPad (Windows)
- Vim (Linux)
- any other text editor
