Render System Messages with GitHub flavored markdown, or provide an option to choose the flavor

[MoritzLost]

I often create custom System Messages for custom workflows. The template is parsed as Markdown to allow some HTML formatting.

The problem is that it uses good ol' markdown:

cms/src/mail/Mailer.php

Lines 201 to 203 in 0c18561

	$message->setHtmlBody($view->renderTemplate($template, array_merge($variables, [
	'body' => Template::raw(Markdown::process($htmlBody)),
	]), $templateMode));

What's really counter-intuitive in "classic" Markdown (especially for authors / end users) is that newlines are ignored. To get a newline, you need to add two spaces at the end of the line. This isn't very common anymore.

Suggested improvement

I suggest rendering the templates with the gfm flavor instead. GitHub flavored Markdown automatically converts newlines to <br> without having to append two spaces. This would be backwards compatible, since appending two spaces still works. And it would make formatting messages as bit more convenient.

---

As a fun side note, I'm also having issues setting the default content for my custom mails with newlines in my translations file, because my .editorconfig has trim_trailing_whitespace = true 👀

[brandonkelly]

Done for 5.9! (d8d2e48)

[MoritzLost]

@brandonkelly Thanks, Brandon! 🚀

[brandonkelly]

Craft 5.9.0 is out with that change 🎉

[MoritzLost]

@brandonkelly I just noticed that my suggestion wasn't correct. The gfm flavor applies GitHub flavored Markdown, but without the automatic conversion of newlines to <br>. Looks like Craft treats this as a separate flavor, gfm-comment.

The newline thing is the main hang up I had with classic Markdown. Any chance this could be changed to gfm-comment still?
Sorry that I missed that in my initial suggestion!

[brandonkelly]

@MoritzLost You can force a <br> by ending a line with a backslash (\):

First line \
Second line

[MoritzLost]

@brandonkelly Yes, that or with two spaces at the end of the line. But the problem is that authors don't expect this or know about it. I can set the default for new system messages, but as soon as authors start editing those, the two spaces (or backslash) get quickly deleted, and authors are wondering why their line breaks are collapsing. (Again, sorry I missed the difference between gfm and gfm-comments in the first place.)