I love markdown. I write my blogs in markdown. For most user text areas in my web apps I support markdown and save both the markdown and the formatted text into my data store.
from markdown import markdown
class MyNote(models.Model):
def save(self, force_insert=False, force_update=False):
self.html_note = markdown(self.note)
super(MyNote, self).save(force_insert, force_update)
Easy.