🧵 Converters

Markdown → Textile

Basic Markdown to Textile converter: h1./h2./h3., *bold* _italic_, lists and links. Used in Redmine and old blog engines.

Markdown

Textile:

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Markdown to Textile

Textile predates Markdown and still carries a sizeable installed base: Redmine uses Textile by default in tickets and wikis, and the same holds for versions of other project management tools. Anyone writing a task description in Markdown and pasting it into one of those systems watches the formatting simply not happen.

Paste the Markdown and receive Textile. Headings gain the prefix with the letter h, the level number and a full stop; a hyphen list becomes an asterisk list; bold moves to a single asterisk and italic to an underscore; inline code swaps backticks for at signs; and links take the format with the text in quotes followed by a colon and the address.

The conversion is line by line and covers the formatting that appears in a ticket description. Anything requiring structure — tables, multi-line code blocks, nested quotes — stays out. Keep in mind that Textile is sensitive to the start of the line: the heading prefix must sit in the first column, and a leading space prevents recognition.

Frequently asked questions

Does Redmine accept Markdown?

In recent versions, yes: there is a setting to switch the formatter to Markdown for the instance. The catch is that the switch applies to all previously stored content, and older Textile-written text starts displaying wrongly. That is why many installations stay on Textile.

Why does inline code use the at sign?

It is Textile's choice for literal code, and it creates a practical problem in text containing email addresses: a mid-sentence at sign can be read as opening a code span. When that happens, the route is escaping the character or using span notation with an attribute.

Is Textile still developed?

The specification has been stable for years and implementations get maintenance, but no new language features appear. Its use today is essentially installed base — systems that adopted Textile before Markdown took hold and have no strong reason to migrate.

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