friendica seems to have a native markup syntax that involves square-bracketed tags reminiscent of the old phpBB forums, but this server has a plugin that enables markdown support.

Some questions:

1. Is it translated into the native markup at post submission time? If I edit my posts that I wrote in markdown, will I be editing the markdown, or the translation?
2. If someone on a server that doesn't have the plugin sees my posts, will they appear formatted?
3. If I download my posts via the API, will I get the markdown source, or a translation of it?

Here are some samples: italic, bold, link. I'll edit in my findings.

Edit:

1. The markdown syntax is translated at submission time, so everything is now in friendica's native square-bracket-tag syntax.
2. My guess is the markdown version of the post doesn't exist after submission, so there's no compatibility issues with other servers.
3. ...and likewise the API won't be able to get the markdown version.

I was largely interested in this question because I like markdown as a format to have my posts in, and was thinking about how to write posts here so that I could later migrate them to another platform if I ever do get a blog. Being unable to keep the markdown versions is a little discouraging, but of course not that big of a deal. Doing the reverse translation shouldn't be difficult if necessary.