Version 39 of Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language.

Description

Originally created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz in 2004, Markdown allows people "to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML or HTML. It is used to make the sources of static web pages more human readable, and it is also more pleasant to write in than HTML. It is used as a markup language, for example at:

  * [http://www.stackoverflow.com%|%StackOverflow]
  * GitHub, a [git] repository host, for formatting Readme files, issues, and other comments (https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/)
  * GitLab, another git repository hosting service
  * [fossil], a distributed SCM
  * DEVONthink, a knowledge database software for documents
  * OneDay, a diary software
  * Things, a todo software
  * Jupyter Notebook, an application for writing documents combining live-code with text etc.
  * [ruff], [mkdoc::mkdoc], [tmdoc::tmdoc], Tcl packages for source code documentation (and literate programming)
  * [mkdic]
  * RMarkdown, mixing markdown and [R] code in a kind of [literate programming]

Variants

The original markdown specification from 2004 is only loosely defined. The commonmark specification is a strict definition of how to format a document using markdown. Besides this, many variants of markdown have evolved, each typically adding some features not included in the original. For example:

  * GFM = Github-flavoured markdown
  * [MultiMarkdown]
  * [pandoc]'s markdown
  * Markdown Extra (PHP markdown)
  * Kramdown
  * Extramark
  * [CommonMark]
  * Maruku
  * Markdeep

Markup languages similar to Markdown

HJG 2013-09-22 - http://txt2tags.org/ It uses python, and supports output to HTML, XHTML, SGML, DocBook, LaTeX, Lout, Man page, Creole, Wikipedia/MediaWiki, Google Code Wiki, PmWiki, DokuWiki, MoinMoin, MagicPoint, PageMaker, AsciiDoc, ASCII Art, Plain text.

Other similar ones are for example: AsciiDoc, Creole, reStructuedText, DocBook or Textile

Tools

Caius (unmaintained, superseded by its fork in Tcllib)

The CAIUS project has a pure Tcl package for processing Markdown.

CommonMark

A standardized version of Markdown. Also with Tcl bindings.

cmark

Tcl wrapper for CommonMark.

jimsoldout, TclSoldout

Jim, Tcl bindings to libsoldout.

Markdown2Go

tclhoedown

Tcl wrapper around Hoedown, a Markdown processor forked from Sundown (Sundown is no longer maintained).

Tcllib

Version 1.18 has a markdown module derived from tcl-markdown on github [L1 ].

Tclssg

Contains its own fork of the Caius Markdown package with bugfixes and an option to not convert tabs to spaces.

TclSundown (unmaintained)

Tcl wrapper around Sundown, a Markdown processor (AK, Nov 9, 2014: I have a copy of Jeremy's Fossil repository. If anybody is interested I can put it up somewhere).

JOB - 2016-06-15 17:21:53

Utility script to convert all markup files in the current directory:

Prerequisites:

• Perl must be installed on your machine,
• markdown.pl again needs some more packages: html, json,...

package require Tk
catch {console show}

# convert to html using markdown

set dir [file dirname [info script]]

set mdcmd [file join $dir "util/Markdown.pl"]
set pattern "*.text"
set ext ".html"

# fix the directory name (required for glob under windows) ...
set basedir [string trimright [file join [file normalize $dir] { }]]

# execute markdown...

foreach f [glob -nocomplain -type {f r} -path $basedir $pattern] {

        # change file extension:
        set htmlfile [file rootname $f]
        append htmlfile $ext
        
        # puts "exec perl $mdcmd --html4tags $f > $htmlfile"
        eval exec perl $mdcmd --html4tags $f > $htmlfile &
}

# e.g. loading the browser...
set current_file [file join $dir "testfile.html"]
set command [list {*}[auto_execok start] {}]
exec {*}$command chrome $current_file &
puts "Done"
exit 0

The above script can be replaced by the following - a pure tcl markdown implementation available in tcllib as already described further up:

package require Tk
catch {console show}

# convert to html using markdown

set dir [file dirname [info script]]

lappend auto_path [file join $dir "lib"]

package require textutil
package require Markdown


set pattern "*.text"
set ext ".html"

# fix the directory name (required for glob under windows) ...
set basedir [string trimright [file join [file normalize $dir] { }]]

# execute markdown...

foreach f [glob -nocomplain -type {f r} -path $basedir $pattern] {

        # change file extension:
        set htmlfile [file rootname $f]
        append htmlfile $ext

        # slurp up the data file
        set fp [open $f "r"]
        set markup [read $fp]
        close $fp

        set fp [open $htmlfile "w"]
        puts -nonewline $fp [Markdown::convert $markup]
        close $fp
}

puts "Done"


if {1} {
        set current_file [file join $dir "testfile.html"]

        set command [list {*}[auto_execok start] {}]
        exec {*}$command chrome $current_file &
        exit 0
}