Markdown and image alignment
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/255170
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I am making a site that publishes articles in issues each month. It is straightforward, and I think using a Markdown editor (like the WMD one here in Stack Overflow) would be perfect.
However, they do need the ability to have images right-aligned in a given paragraph.
I can't see a way to do that with the current system - is it possible?
Solution
You can embed HTML in Markdown, so you can do something like this:
<img style="float: right;" src="whatever.jpg">
Continue markdown text...
OTHER TIPS
Many Markdown "extra" processors support attributes. So you can include a class name like so (PHP Markdown Extra):
{.callout}
or, alternatively (Maruku, Kramdown, Python Markdown):
{: .callout}
Then, of course, you can use a stylesheet the proper way:
.callout {
float: right;
}
If yours supports this syntax, it gives you the best of both worlds: no embedded markup, and a stylesheet abstract enough to not need to be modified by your content editor.
I found a nice solution in pure Markdown with a little CSS 3 hack :-)
Follow the CSS 3 code float image on the left or right, when the image alt ends with < or >.
img[alt$=">"] {
float: right;
}
img[alt$="<"] {
float: left;
}
img[alt$="><"] {
display: block;
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
margin: auto;
float: none!important;
}
Embedding CSS is bad:
CSS in another file:
img[alt=Flowers] { float: right; }
I like to be super lazy by using tables to align images with the vertical pipe (|) syntax. This is supported by some Markdown flavours (and is also supported by Textile if that floats your boat):
| I am text to the left |  |
or
|  | I am text to the right |
It is not the most flexible solution, but it is good for most of my simple needs, is easy to read in markdown format, and you don't need to remember any CSS or raw HTML.
I have an alternative to the methods above that used the ALT tag and a CSS selector on the alt tag... Instead, add a URL hash like this:
First your Markdown image code:
Note the added URL hash #center.
Now add this rule in CSS using CSS 3 attribute selectors to select images with a certain path.
img[src*='#left'] {
float: left;
}
img[src*='#right'] {
float: right;
}
img[src*='#center'] {
display: block;
margin: auto;
}
You should be able to use a URL hash like this almost like defining a class name and it isn't a misuse of the ALT tag like some people had commented about for that solution. It also won't require any additional extensions. Do one for float right and left as well or any other styles you might want.
Even cleaner would be to just put p#given img { float: right } in the style sheet, or in the <head> and wrapped in style tags. Then, just use the markdown .
<div style="float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0" markdown="1">
</div>
The attribute markdown possibility inside Markdown.
I liked learnvst's answer of using the tables because it is quite readable (which is one purpose of writing Markdown).
However, in the case of GitBook's Markdown parser I had to, in addition to an empty header line, add a separator line under it, for the table to be recognized and properly rendered:
| - | - |
|---|---|
| I am text to the left |  |
|  | I am text to the right |
Separator lines need to include at least three dashes --- .
If you implement it in Python, there is an extension that lets you add HTML key/value pairs, and class/id labels. The syntax is for this is:
{: style="float:right"}
Or, if embedded styling doesn't float your boat,
{: .floatright}
with a corresponding stylesheet, stylish.css:
.floatright {
float: right;
/* etc. */
}
As greg said you can embed HTML content in Markdown, but one of the points of Markdown is to avoid having to have extensive (or any, for that matter) CSS/HTML markup knowledge, right? This is what I do:
In my Markdown file I simply instruct all my wiki editors to embed wrap all images with something that looks like this:
'<div> // Put image here </div>`
(of course.. they don't know what <div> means, but that shouldn't matter)
So the Markdown file looks like this:
<div>
![optional image description][1]
</div>
[1]: /image/path
And in the CSS content that wraps the whole page I can do whatever I want with the image tag:
img {
float: right;
}
Of course you can do more with the CSS content... (in this particular case, wrapping the img tag with div prevents other text from wrapping against the image... this is just an example, though), but IMHO the point of Markdown is that you don't want potentially non-technical people getting into the ins and outs of CSS/HTML.. it's up to you as a web developer to make your CSS content that wraps the page as generic and clean as possible, but then again your editors need not know about that.
I had the same task, and I aligned my images to the right by adding this:
<div style="text-align: right"><img src="/default/image/sms.png" width="100" /></div>
For aligning your image to the left or center, replace
<div style="text-align: right">
with
<div style="text-align: center">
<div style="text-align: left">
Simplest is to wrap the image in a center tag, like so ...
<center></center>
Anything to do with Markdown can be tested here - http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
Sure, <center> may be deprecated, but it's simple and it works!
