christian-bromann
commented
1 year ago By default VS Code uses their own markdown parser through the built-in [markdown-language-features](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/extensions/markdown-language-features/notebook/index.ts] extension which uses markdown-it for parsing. Along with it comes an own CSS which has an impact on the appearance.
From what I understand, most of Markdown parser try to follow the CommonMark Spec. GitHub-flavored markdown (short GFM) says it would close some gaps in the specification:
John Gruber’s canonical description of Markdown’s syntax does not specify the syntax unambiguously.
Ultimately it is up to us how we render every cell. Currently we re-use VS Codes existing Markdown renderer as described above but could easily ship our own for better support for certain features, e.g. support for mdx etc.
It's unclear what the gap is to mimic GitHub-flavored markdown. It's also unclear if it should be the parser's job to poly-fill and rewrite GH markdown to regular markdown.
An example is https://github.com/linkerd/linkerd2/blob/main/README.md where a reference syntax is being used to replace URLs in hyperlinks and images. There's likely more.