On Oct 20, 2025, Didier Kryn wrote:
>     Hello guys.
>
>     I'm confused with markdown files. Essentially I'm concerned with
> README.md like one can find in any git store, like git.devuan.org.
>
>     1) If I write a file in the Markdown format, my browser doesn't know how
> to display it.

As I recall, raw markdown should generically be identified as
text/markdown, which (insofar as I understand mimetypes) should result
in a browser treating it pretty much like text/plain -- i.e. show it on
the page as "plain text" (as opposed to attempting to download it,
etc.). I suppose if something's gone awry, it might identify it as
application/octet-stream.

>
>     2) If I point my browser to the same file through a server at localhost,
> it still can't display it.

Not 100% sure what you mean here, are you getting a 404 or something?

>
>     3) If I point the same browser to some README.md file in the git store,
> now it can display it.

I'm going to assume you mean the project repository on
git{hub,lab,ea,...}. If not, could you clarify what you mean by "git
store"?

>
>     4) If I look at the content of the README.md file, it is just plain
> HTML!

This doesn't make any sense, a markdown file should be plain text (see
above).

Wait, do you mean that you're doing "view -> source" on a webpage
that is displaying rendered markdown?

If the latter, that makes total sense -- the data has to be rendered
server-side before you get a "web-page". Think the equivalent of PHP or
other CGI-scripted websites.

>
>     Is somebody lying, or is there some mechanism in the servers which
> convert md to html, or what else?

Sounds like it may just be a gap in understanding (maybe)

Markdown isn't something that's interpreted by your browser, but rather
something serverside (apache2 would need the markdown module; IIRC
something along the lines of 'libapache2-mod-md' in the package repos).


--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860