Markdown alternative with classes

Ecstatic Coder

Markdown is really a great alternative to HTML, and I've used it for a while, but unfortunately it had some quirks and limitations that REALLY annoyed me, like the inability to apply styling classes where needed. If some of you are in the same case, I've released an alternative lightweight markup language (https://github.com/senselogic/PENDOWN) especially designed to fix those problems. It can be quickly converted to HTML in the navigator through a JS script, or offline by a server-side command line tool. For those interested, here are a few sample tags :

! Heading 1
!! Heading 2
!!! Heading 3
!!!! Heading 4
!!!!! Heading 5
!!!!!! Heading 6

**bold**
%%italics%%
^^superscript^^
,,subscript,,
~~strikethrough~~
__underlined__
##highlighted##

{{ span }}
{{{ div }}}

box

+++ frame +++

quote >>>
::: pre :::

:::^cpp\
// Colorized source code

#include using namespace std;

int main()
{
cout << "Hello world!";

return 0;

}
:::

[[[
(( Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday ))
(( 1 | 2 | 3 ))
(( 1 | 2 | 3 ))
(( 1 | 2 | 3 ))
]]]

* List
* List
* Sub-list
* Sub-list
# Numbered sub-list
# Numbered sub-list
# Numbered sub-list
# Numbered sub-list
# Numbered
sub-list

@@http://www.github.com A link to Github@@
@@http://www.github.com [[image.jpg:20]]@@
@@http://www.github.com@@

[[image.jpg]]
[[image.jpg:20]]
[[image.jpg:20vw,20%]]

After a Pendown tag, you can specify one or several lists of classes and properties :

{{^big,red,yellow_background\ a big red text with a yellow background }}

{{^@2.5,$00f,#eee,black_outline\ a big blue text with a light gray background and a black outline }}

Those lists can be named, so that you can reuse them elsewhere in the document :

!^gangnam\ This title also uses the gangnam style.

OriginalGriff

This is the wrong place to post this, really - this forum can move very fats, and posts like this can be swept into oblivion quickly. Instead, have you considered posting this as a Tip? Submit a new Article[^] As it stands, it wouldn't qualify as an article, but with a little more detail a tip should be fine. And it would be a lot easier to find later!

Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

Johnny J

OriginalGriff wrote:

this forum can move very fats

HEY! I resemble that remark! I'm only slightly overweight! :mad:

Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
-----
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Winston Churchill, 1944
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Mark Twain

Chris Maunder

It's way more helpful to post an article and share the code than it is to advertise your project on the Lounge. Imagine if everyone posted "hey, check out my new tool" message. I'm going to move this to the free tools forum. Besides that, I have two comments 1. Well done. I too am writing Yet Another Markdown Processor myself because the current ones are too ambiguous and don't have everything I want. It's a PITA to get all the cases right. 2. I don't, however, understand the motivation for creating yet another syntax that's not compatible with markdown just to add styling. Markdown already includes the ability to include plain HTML with styles and classes. Further, the intent of Markdown is that "a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions". So what you've proposed is actually a markup, not markdown. Maybe it's worth creating an extension to markdown that allows style classes to be defined the way you've done it, but within a syntax that's backwards compatible with Markdown (whatever that means these days(

cheers Chris Maunder

Ecstatic Coder

I agree, a tip or an article would be much more suited and useful :)

Richard Deeming

Chris Maunder wrote:

I too am writing Yet Another Markdown Processor

Obligatory XKCD[^]. :)

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

Ecstatic Coder

Indeed an article will be more useful and durable :) About the syntax, actually the first implemented version was much closer to Markdown, but over the time the syntax has evolved a lot, mostly in order to remove many Markdown limitations. For instance Pendown's tags are especially chosen to generate almost no collision with standard C-like code (except for << and >> I think) so that the tags can be freely used in code snippets. And the table syntax allows tables to be embedded into other tables. Etc etc... So I agree, Pendown is not a Markdown variant, but I still think it's a good alternative, with many improvements over its spiritual ancestor :)

jasonstanley

Thank you I just used it for my purpose.

Ecstatic Coder

My pleasure :)