# Using GitHub Gists and Markdown to Share Text Documents

DevFeed: [Using GitHub Gists and Markdown to Share Text Documents](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/welcome-to-gist-github-com-username-28172.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/git/2020/01/17/welcome-to-gist-github-com-username.html>)

Author: Fuzzygroup

Published: 2020-01-17T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Scott Johnson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/scott-johnson.md>)

Topics: [GitHub](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/github.md>), [Markdown](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/markdown.md>)

Tags: [gist](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gist.md>), [git](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/git.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [internet](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/internet.md>), [markdown](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/markdown.md>)

## AI overview

A tutorial explains how to use GitHub Gists as a lightweight way to share text documents for review. It describes creating a gist, using a Markdown filename such as timeline.md, and choosing a public or secret gist.

## Source excerpt

I'd love to tell you that I figured this one out on my own but I didn't - my friend Nick Janetakis taught me this trick. Here's the problem statement: When you have a text document that you want someone to review, how do you put that document onto the Internet? One obvious answer is Google Docs. Another is some kind of shared file tool like Dropbox. But these tools are heavy. The idea of a heavy tool is a developer thing and it means that the tool does so much more than you need to solve the problem that using it feels awkward. So let's restate the problem: When you have a text document that you want someone to review, what's a lightweight tool that you can use to put that document on the Internet? When you start to work with people online, they often show you some cool tool that you never knew existed. And this is just that type of thing. Nick showed me: https://gist.github.com/ If you goto https://gist.github.com/ when you are logged into Github then you get a place where you can create a gist. The idea of a gist is that it is a snippet of text that you share online. Now this was originally written for Programmer Foo to share a code routine with Programmer Bar who, in turn, might them change it and share with Programmer Baz. Now you might be thinking that how does a web based code sharing tool make it possible for you to share a document ? The answer is simple: markdown. Markdown is an Internet standard for online writing which uses simple ASCII encoding to generate html. For example a single # character means "Make a Heading of Level 1", two ## characters means "Make a heading of Level 2". Here is a Markdown Cheatsheet. What you can do to share a document is this: Create a github account if you don't have one and login. Go to gist.github.com and click the + sign in the black header. This creates a new gist which gives you a web form where you can enter it. Enter a filename like timeline.md (the .md extension is for markdown). The filename extension tells Github h