Today, I wanna talk about this thing, “md qualifier,” and how I messed around with it.
So, I was working on this project, right? Needed to deal with some markdown files. Now, I’ve used markdown before, it’s pretty simple. You know, you got your headings, your bold text, italics, and all that jazz. But then I stumbled upon this idea of qualifiers, and I was like, “What’s this all about?”
First thing I did was hit up the internet, did some searching. Found out that nearly all these markdown tools support the basics from the original design, which is cool. But there are some small differences here and there, which can be a pain.
Then, I started playing around with my own files. I was trying to see if I could add some extra info to my markdown elements, like giving them IDs or classes, similar to what you do in HTML. I found some examples online where people were talking about this, but it wasn’t super clear how it all worked.
One thing I noticed was this weird syntax, something like “PIC X(12)” and “PIC X(2)”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed important for defining these qualifiers. I also saw mentions of stuff like “Sender DFI Identifier” and “DFI ID # Qualifier,” which sounded kinda technical.
After messing around for a while, I realized that these qualifiers are not something that’s built into the standard markdown. It seemed more like something specific to certain tools or systems.
There were also some random mentions of things like “accessing applications” and “unauthorized access,” which totally threw me off. I mean, what does that have to do with markdown?
So I started experimenting. I tried adding different types of qualifiers to my headings and paragraphs, just to see what would happen. Most of the time, nothing really changed. The markdown still rendered the same way. But in some cases, I saw that the extra info I added was actually showing up in the output, which was interesting.
I read something about a study involving interviews and adding an adolescent population, and I thought, “Maybe this is relevant?” Like, maybe qualifiers are used to mark up different parts of a document for research purposes or something. I still wasn’t sure, to be honest.
And then there was this thing about a “newly enhanced site for the Maryland Code and Court Rules.” I guess that’s a specific use case where qualifiers might be important, but it didn’t really help me understand the bigger picture.
Experiment
- Tried adding qualifiers: I started by adding simple things like
# Heading {#my-heading}to my markdown files. - Checked the output: In most markdown editors, this didn’t seem to do anything special. The heading just looked like a regular heading.
- Found some tools that recognized qualifiers: I did find that some tools, especially those used for generating static websites, actually used these qualifiers to add IDs or classes to the HTML elements.
- Realized it’s not standard: This made me realize that qualifiers aren’t really a standard part of markdown. They’re more like extensions that some tools support.
At the end of the day, I’m still not 100% sure what “md qualifier” really means in the general sense. It seems like it can mean different things depending on the context. But I did learn a bit about how some tools use this kind of syntax to add extra information to markdown elements. It’s kind of a niche thing, but it was interesting to explore.
I might dig deeper into this later, but for now, I think I’ve got a basic understanding of what’s going on. If any of you folks have more experience with this, feel free to chime in. I’m always up for learning new stuff.
