1. It does not need to be "rendered" with any special tools before reading it. There are some tools that may pass markdown through a "rendering" phase such as g

1. It does not need to be "rendered" with any special tools before reading it. There are some tools that may pass markdown through a "rendering" phase such as github's markdown viewer but it's pleasant to read in the raw format too. Markdown is not the only option for a readable raw format. But it's somewhat of a defacto standard and gets the job done. It's easy to use without formally learning it. I never had to "learn" markdown myself, just type some text, indent for code, done. 2. n/a 3. n/a