Roller Markdown Plugin

The Roller Markdown Plugin enables Markdown syntax in Roller blog entries, and bundles the markItUp! editor to provide visual Markdown editing.

Prerequisites

• JDK 1.5 or greater.
• Roller 4.0 or greater.

Copyright and Licensing

The plugin source code is released under an MIT License.

Copyright 2008 Alex Coles.

A copy of the License may be found in the MIT-LICENSE file.

Additionally, this plugin bundles the following software:

• MarkdownJ is licensed under a BSD License.
• markItUp! is dual-licensed under both MIT and GPL Licenses.
• jQuery is dual-licensed under both MIT and GPL Licenses.

Installation

Install files

You can use the installer script provided to perform steps 1-3 for you: ROLLER_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/roller ./install.sh

1. Copy the following libraries to your ROLLER_INSTALL_DIR/WEB-INF/lib:

   • markdownj-1.0.2b4-0.3.0.jar: the MarkdownJ library
   • roller-markdown.jar: this plugin

2. Create a new directory for editor plugins in your ROLLER_INSTALL_DIR:
   mkdir -p plugins-ui/authoring/editors

3. Copy the contents of this plugin web/editors directory to your newly created directory for editor plugins:
   cp -R web/editors $ROLLER_INSTALL_DIR/plugins-ui/authoring/

Configuration

4. Edit your roller-custom.properties with your favourite editor. If you installed Roller to Tomcat for example, your Roller configuration will most likely be found in $CATALINA_HOME/common/classes/roller-custom.properties.

5. Thoroughly read the Roller Install Guide which lists all default properties. However, for convenience the default properties for Roller 4.0 Release are listed in these instructions.
   Change the properties as listed below:

   Change from the defaults:
   plugins.page=\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.ConvertLineBreaksPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.TopicTagPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.ObfuscateEmailPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.SmileysPlugin

   plugins.weblogEntryEditors=\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.ui.core.plugins.TextEditor,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.ui.core.plugins.XinhaEditor

   plugins.defaultEditor=editor-text.jsp

   to:
   plugins.page=\ com.ikonoklastik.roller.business.plugins.entry.markdown.MarkdownPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.ConvertLineBreaksPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.TopicTagPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.ObfuscateEmailPlugin \ ,org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.entry.SmileysPlugin

   plugins.weblogEntryEditors=\ com.ikonoklastik.roller.ui.plugins.markdown.MarkdownEditor,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.ui.core.plugins.TextEditor

   If you wish to make the Markdown editor your default: plugins.defaultEditor=editor-markdown.jsp

6. If you wish to allow Markdown formatting in your comment system, then make the following additional changes:

   Change from (the defaults): comment.formatter.classnames=\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.AutoformatPlugin,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.LinkMarkupPlugin,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.HTMLSubsetPlugin

   to: comment.formatter.classnames=\ com.ikonoklastik.roller.business.plugins.entry.markdown.MarkdownCommentPlugin,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.AutoformatPlugin,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.LinkMarkupPlugin,\ org.apache.roller.weblogger.business.plugins.comment.HTMLSubsetPlugin

7. Restart your Roller installation (the web application, rather than the server) to begin using the plugin.

Building the Source

This plugin was developed with the NetBeans IDE. A NetBeans project is included along with the source code.

To compile the Roller Markdown plugin, you'll need to download either the Roller source or binaries:

wget http://apache.mult	idist.com/roller/roller-4/v4.0.0/bin/apache-roller-4.0.zip
unzip apache-roller-4.0.zip

The plugin has the following dependencies, which you will need to include in your compile path:

• roller-core
• roller-business
• roller-web
• commons-lang
• commons-logging

More detailed instructions for building the source will be added.

Support

Use is at your own risk. Comments, feedback and patches are welcome though. You can contact the developer at alex@alexcolesportfolio.com.