markdown/README.md
Michael Teichgräber 61095f6cc4 README.md: update
2012-05-04 16:36:04 +02:00

126 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

This is an implementation of John Gruber's [markdown][] in
[Go][]. It is a translation of [peg-markdown][], written by
John MacFarlane in C, into Go. It is using a modified version
of Andrew J Snodgrass' PEG parser [peg][] -- now supporting
LEG grammars --, which itself is based on the parser used
by peg-markdown.
[markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[peg-markdown]: https://github.com/jgm/peg-markdown
[peg]: https://github.com/pointlander/peg
[Go]: http://golang.org/
Support for HTML output is implemented, but Groff and LaTeX
output have not been ported. The output is identical
to that of peg-markdown.
I try to keep the grammar in sync with the C version, by
cherry-picking relevant changes. In the commit history the
corresponding revisions have a suffix *[jgm/peg-markdown].*
A simple benchmark has been done by comparing the
execution times of the Go binary (cmd/main.go) and the
original C implementation's binary needed for processing
a Markdown document, which had been created by
concatenating ten [Markdown syntax descriptions][syntax].
[syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text
The C version is still around 1.3x faster than the Go version.
## Installation
Provided you have a copy of Go 1, and git is available,
go get github.com/knieriem/markdown
should download and install the package according to
your GOPATH settings.
See doc.go for an example how to use the package. There has
been an API change recently: Where you previously wrote
buf, err := ioutil.ReadAll(os.Stdin)
...
doc := markdown.Parse(string(buf), markdown.Extensions{Smart: true})
doc.WriteHtml(w)
you would now write:
p := markdown.NewParser(&markdown.Extensions{Smart: true})
w := bufio.NewWriter(os.Stdout)
p.Markdown(os.Stdin, markdown.ToHTML(w))
w.Flush()
One purpose of the change is to have a Parser that can be
reused between invocations of the converter.
---
To create the command line program *markdown,* run
go build github.com/knieriem/markdown/cmd/markdown
the binary should then be available in the current directory.
To run tests, type
go test github.com/knieriem/markdown
At the moment, tests are based on the .text files from the
Markdown 1.0.3 test suite created by John Gruber, [imported from
peg-markdown][testsuite]. The output of the conversion of these
.text files to html is compared to the output of peg-markdown.
[testsuite]: https://github.com/jgm/peg-markdown/tree/master/MarkdownTest_1.0.3
## Development
There is not yet a way to create a Go source file like
`parser.leg.go` automatically from another file, `parser.leg`,
when building packages and commands using the Go tool. To make
*markdown* installable using `go get`, `parser.leg.go` has
been added to the VCS.
`Make parser` will update `parser.leg.go` using `leg` which
is part of [knieriem/peg][] at github , if parser.leg has
been changed, or if the Go file is missing. If a copy of *peg*
is not yet present on your system, run
go get github.com/knieriem/peg
Then `make parser` should succeed.
[knieriem/peg]: https://github.com/knieriem/peg
## Extensions
In addition to the extensions already present in peg-markdown,
this package also supports definition lists (option `-dlists`)
similar to the way they are described in the documentation of
[PHP Markdown Extra][].
Definitions (`<dd>...</dd>`) are implemented using [`ListTight`][ListTight]
and `ListLoose`, on which bullet lists and ordered lists are based
already. If there is an empty line between the definition title and
the first definition, a loose list is expected, a tight list otherwise.
As definition item markers both `:` and `~` can be used.
[PHP Markdown Extra]: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#def-list
[ListTight]: https://github.com/knieriem/markdown/blob/master/parser.leg#L191
## Todo
* Port tables and perhaps other extensions from [fletcher/peg-multimarkdown][mmd].
## Subdirectory Index
* cmd/markdown command line program `markdown`
[mmd]: https://github.com/fletcher/peg-multimarkdown