markdown/README.markdown
Michael Teichgräber a1392cd0e1 update README
2011-07-04 18:13:48 +02:00

130 lines
4.3 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 is itself 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 should be identical
to that of peg-markdown.
A simple benchmark has been done by comparing the
execution time 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
In [December 2010][dec], the `8g` compiled Go version still was
around 3.5 times slower than the original C version.
[dec]: https://github.com/knieriem/markdown/commit/b3f7b3
In the meantime Go compilers and runtime have been improved,
which reduced the factor down to around 2.5 for both `8g` and `6g`
for the unmodified sources.
After some current changes to the peg/leg parser generator
the Markdown parser can take advantage of the *switch* optimization
now. This further reduced the execution time difference
to 1.9x for `6/8g`.
## Installation
Provided you have a recent copy of Go, and git is available,
goinstall github.com/knieriem/markdown
should install the package into
`$GOROOT/src/pkg/github.com/knieriem/markdown`, and build
it.
See doc.go for an example how to use the package.
To create the command line program *markdown,* run
cd $GOROOT/src/pkg/github.com/knieriem/markdown
gomake cmd
the binary should then be available in subdirectory *cmd.*
To run the Markdown 1.0.3 test suite, type
make mdtest
This will download peg-markdown, in case you have `git`
available, build cmd/markdown, and run the test suite.
The test suite will fail on one test, for the same reason which
applies to peg-markdown, because the grammar is the same.
See the [original README][] for details.
[original README]: https://github.com/jgm/peg-markdown/blob/master/README.markdown
## Development
[`Goinstall`][Goinstall] is creating its own Makefiles to build
packages, based on the `.go` files found in the directory.
It would not know about `parser.leg.go`, which had to be built
by `leg` from the `parser.leg` grammar source file first.
Because of this, to make *markdown* installable using
`goinstall`, `parser.leg.go` has been added to the VCS.
`Make` will update `parser.leg.go` using `leg`, which is part of
[knieriem/peg][] at github, if parser.leg has been changed. If
a copy of this package has not yet been downloaded -- i.e. no
directory `./peg` is present --, `make` will perform the
neccessary steps automatically (run `make peg` to manually
download [knieriem/peg][]).
To update [knieriem/peg][] run `gomake update-peg`. This will
fetch available revisions from github, and remove the old
*leg* binary.
[goinstall]: http://golang.org/cmd/goinstall/
[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
* Implement tables
* Rename element key identifiers, so that they are not public
* Where appropriate, use more idiomatic Go code
## Subdirectory Index
* peg PEG parser generator (modified) from Andrew J Snodgrass
* peg/leg LEG parser generator, based on PEG
* cmd command line program `markdown`