Major glitch in formatting for code samples in about_ files on TechNet

[Jaykul]

The code examples are a total mess, for example, the ones in about_Comparison_Operators

[doctordns]

Is this a glitch in how MSDN formats the pages? Or is this an issue with the markdown on the page itself?

[Jaykul]

The markdown is wrong. All of those numbers have a "#" in front of them turning them into headers.

[doctordns]

I just took a look - yes. The markdown itself is a bit of a mess. I am happy to take a stab at getting this into better shape!

[doctordns]

I have gone through this document, adding markdown for the examples, removing the # tags around the place and trying to make this better. I've issues a pull request - hopefully this revolves that problem!

[Jaykul]

I think it's most of the about_ files though. I mean, I just spot-checked:

• about_trap and about_Remote_Jobs have good code examples, actually in code blocks, and with syntax highlighting (even when it shouldn't be highlighted).
• about_arithmetic_operators, about_assignment_operators, about_commonparameters have the really bad code examples (like about_Comparison_Operators)
• about_Remote, about_Remote_Variables, and about_regular_expressions have no markup on their code examples at all (which I think is basically the same as the ones with the really bad code examples, except there just happened to not be # in the example code...)

[doctordns]

Thanks Jaykul. There is much work to be done. Once the current pull request is actioned, I am happy to work through those about_* files to correct them. Unless of course someone beats me to it.

[zjalexander]

Yeah, there's a general scrub of about_ topics that's called for at this point.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/reference/3.0/psworkflow/about/about_workflows
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/reference/3.0/psworkflow/about/about_activitycommonparameters
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/reference/3.0/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_aliases

some are missing proper formatting. all are missing proper links in the "see also" section. I got to talk to @juanpablojofre and see if he had some tooling developed since it's not consistent across all about files and all versions, and I remember the process of getting stuff into markdown was quite .... iterative.

[Xalorous]

I see styling with markdown is accepted here in the comments, what about the "about_" pages?

The 'about_regular_expressions' page is an unformatted copy/pasta of output from Get-Help about_regular_expressions, but the help output contains space delimited tables that translate very poorly. The website needs it converted to a table somehow, but I don't know the formatting used to go from what's on the github to what's seen on technet.

Edit: I just tested, the unformatted text in about_regular_expressions previews nicely when re-done using markdown. However, I did not find what I needed in that text, and I do not have time to convert the whole text, PLUS the other about_* files also need some treatment, and it would be better done using some programmatic method, to ensure uniformity. My text parsing skills are basically non-existent. Perhaps someone has access to the source files that were used to create the help file? Might be easier to reformat those, or use those to create the technet page.

[zjalexander]

yup, markdown in the about_ topics is definitely allowed. we've fixed a few (about_pipelines at least, from #1262 ). I think @juanpablojofre had a plan for the rest according to a meeting today?