No, there isn't really a consensus. FWIW, this is not a "new elegant Markdown", this is a 100% standards compilant Markdown library, with optional support for some extensions that we found useful. The syntax for these extensions comes, basically, from the Markdown mailing list and PHP-Markdown Extra.

> this is a 100% standards compilant Markdown library

Eh, what's that now? Isn't Markdown implementation-defined? I wasn't aware there was a spec, I thought it was just some notes on a dude's blog.

I think the "Markdown standard" could be considered to be Gruber's official docs: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

Yes, it is just some notes on a dude's blog. Well put.

I don't know what he meant by that either.

Is Maruku's metadata syntax supported? http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html