Greetings fellow org-mode aficionados! First, a big thanks to all that contributed to the project. It's one of my all-time favorite tools.

I write to you all as I'm looking for advice on help as I upgrade my blog publishing system from the older org-mode to the current 8.x architecture. I wrote a detailed summary of how I did this with 7.8 org-mode here: http://www.railsonmaui.com/blog/2013/04/27/octopress-setup-with-github-and-org-mode/

That system depended on the old exporter and output HTML, rather than markdown.

I looked into the org-octopress plugin, but that's not meeting my needs mostly because the HTML export is not formatting my old org files as I'd like them to.

So, I'm trying to write an extension of ox-md.el that supports extended markdown dialects, such as kramdown and rdiscount.

I took the output from ox-md.el, and I have a small list of changes I need to make for the output. Nicolas as offered me some tips, and suggested I write to the group so all can benefite.

So here's my grand list of questions:

Strategy

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What is the right approach for getting dot-org files into Octopress? Octopress wants Markdown, but Markdown can have embedded HTML: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html

The key consideration is that there must be a blank line before and after the block-level HTML block (div, table, pre, p, etc.) in Markdown. I'd like to make it as easy as possible to support liquid templates, as that's a key part of Octopress. What's the least maintenance in the long run? What's simplest? I'm guessing that Markdown conversion for the basic syntax with a fallback to HTML for lesser supported org-elements.

Debugging and Development Tips for Org-Mode?

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1. What are the best links with development advice?

2. What's the best workflow for developing a new exporter? For example, I've got a small test file that demonstrates the formatting change I'm trying to implement. I compile my ox-md-ext.el file for edebug mode, and then I run the code, checking the output and maybe debugging.

3. Related to #2, is there any example of tests that verify the conversion of input files into output files? Like could I create a few examples of org code and create some examples of the expected octopress enabled markdown that should be generated?

Code is where?

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Where is the code that formats lines to say 80 chars in the ox-md conversion? It's breaking up markdown link text with \n.

Thanks in advance for any advice.