# remove horizontal asterisks
s@\*\*@@g

# preserve double hyphens between words in GNU GPL
s@\([^\S\-]\)\-\-\([^\S\-]\)@\1SDFGHdbldash\2@g

# remove horizontal hyphens
s@\-\-@@g

# reintroduce double hyphens
s@SDFGHdbldash@--@g

# remove trailing asterisk
s@\s*\*\s*$@@g

# remove leading asterisk
s@^\s*\*\s*@@g

# remove lonely slash
s@^/$@@g

# remove leading whitespace
s@^\s\+@@g

# preserve bullets
s@^o\s@oSDFGHbullet@g

# preserve sentence spacing
s@\.\s\s\(\S\)@.SDFGHJdblspace\1@g

# remove first line
1d