# Popular and needed extension

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208>\
**Category:** Extensions\
**Created:** [June 7, 2015, 8:26am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208 "2015-06-07T08:26:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lu\_zero](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/lu_zero/32/557_2.png) [@lu\_zero](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/lu_zero)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 8:26am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208/1 "2015-06-07T08:26:12Z")

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I’d like to try to group the extension and who is needing them.

For my use-case, add markdown support to [sphynx](http://sphinx-doc.org/), I need a good deal of editorial support (e.g. **include** , **attributes** , **yaml-extradata** and few more) that probably can be implemented by adding the **IAL** support kramdown has or something similar, on top of it **tables** are of interest and maybe the **math** support.

I’m sure @vitaly knows more use-cases since he has a fairly large collection of plugins.

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**Author:** ![vitaly](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/vitaly/32/396_2.png) [@vitaly](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/vitaly)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 8:53am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208/2 "2015-06-07T08:53:32Z")

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I don’t track tendencies specially, but something can be analysed in [https://www.npmjs.org/browse/keyword/markdown-it-plugin](https://www.npmjs.org/browse/keyword/markdown-it-plugin)

My personal needs are:

- math
- some kinds of diagrams (not sure)
- collapsible spoilers
- quotes with ref to original & author (2 types - fenced and extension to current)
- footnotes
- tables
- @mentions (github/twitter-like)

Other things i don’t need, but popular:

- attributes (~ maruku-like syntax)
- everything else, described in pandoc & php-markdown-extra extensions.

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**Author:** ![jgm](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/jgm/32/1360_2.png) [@jgm](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/jgm)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208/3 "2015-06-07T18:55:44Z")

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Diagrams, spoilers, quotes, and mentions can easily be  
handled using conventions with current syntax.  
E.g. see the way gitit handles diagrams using fenced  
code blocks: [http://gitit.net/Dot%20Plugin%20Demo](http://gitit.net/Dot%20Plugin%20Demo)

But math, tables, and footnotes are things  
that can’t be handled well without changes to the parser.  
The priority now is still getting the core spec into shape  
(that is hard enough), but I do envision that CommonMark  
will eventually have some officially sanctioned extensions.

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**Author:** ![vitaly](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/vitaly/32/396_2.png) [@vitaly](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/vitaly)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 8:26pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208/4 "2015-06-07T20:26:41Z")

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As far as i remember, we already discussed situation with containers. I still stay, that usability of such containers depends on content height. `blockquote` is convenient for small height, and big height will be better with fenced-style blocks. I will implement both anyway for my needs.

From my point of view, the most affecting will be maruku-like attributes support. Because it will touch almost all elements. If this change is planned, it would be nice to have it sooner than later.

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**Author:** ![chrisalley](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/chrisalley/32/906_2.png) [@chrisalley](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/chrisalley)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 10:48am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/popular-and-needed-extension/1208/5 "2015-06-09T10:48:42Z")

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For me, the priorities are:

- [Implicit Page Links](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/implict-mediawiki-gollum-style-page-links/830)
- [Letter-ordered Lists](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/letter-ordered-lists/173)
- [Description Lists](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/description-list/289)
- [Footnotes](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/how-should-footnotes-behave/1106)
- [Audio and Video](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/embedded-audio-and-video/441/)
- [Creative Work References](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/referencing-creative-works-with-cite/892)

All of these can implemented using either HTML or core-CommonMark syntax, but it would be nice to have humane, Markdown-esque syntax, as officially endorsed CommonMark extensions.