Markmin markup language

About

This is a new markup language that we call markmin designed to produce high quality scientific papers and books and also put them online. We provide serializers for html, latex and pdf. It is implemented in the markmin2html function in the markmin2html.py.

Example of usage:

m = "Hello **world** [[link http://web2py.com]]"
from markmin2html import markmin2html
print markmin2html(m)
from markmin2latex import markmin2latex
print markmin2latex(m)
from markmin2pdf import markmin2pdf # requires pdflatex
print markmin2pdf(m)

Why?

We wanted a markup language with the following requirements:

less than 200 lines of functional code
easy to read
secure
support table, ul, ol, code
support html5 video and audio elements (html serialization only)
can align images and resize them
can specify class for tables and code elements
can add anchors
does not use _ for markup (since it creates odd behavior)
automatically links urls
fast
easy to extend
supports latex and pdf including references
allows to describe the markup in the markup (this document is generated from markmin syntax)

(results depend on text but in average for text ~100K markmin is 30% faster than markdown, for text ~10K it is 10x faster)

The web2py book published by lulu, for example, was entirely generated with markmin2pdf from the online web2py wiki

Download

markmin2html.py and markmin2latex.py are single files and have no web2py dependence. Their license is BSD.

Examples

Bold, italic, code and links

SOURCE	OUTPUT
`# title`	title
`## section`	section
`### subsection`	subsection
`bold`	bold
`''italic''`	italic
`~~strikeout~~`	~~strikeout~~
``verbatim``	`verbatim`
``color with bold``:red	color with bold
``many colors``:color[blue:#ffff00]	many colors
`http://google.com`	http://google.com
`[[click me #myanchor]]`	click me
`[[click me [extra info] #myanchor popup]]`	click me

Anchors

You can place an anchor anywhere in the text using the syntax [[name]] where name is the name of the anchor. You can then link the anchor with link, i.e. [[link #myanchor]] or link with an extra info, i.e. [[link with an extra info [extra info] #myanchor]].

Images

alt-string for the image This paragraph has an image aligned to the right with a width of 200px. Its is placed using the code

[[alt-string for the image [the image title] http://www.web2py.com/examples/static/web2py_logo.png right 200px]].

Unordered Lists

- Dog
- Cat
- Mouse

is rendered as

Dog
Cat
Mouse

Two new lines between items break the list in two lists.

Ordered Lists

+ Dog
+ Cat
+ Mouse

is rendered as

Dog
Cat
Mouse

Tables

Something like this

---------
**A** | **B** | **C**
0 | 0 | X
0 | X | 0
X | 0 | 0
-----:abc

is a table and is rendered as

A	B	C
0	0	X
0	X	0
X	0	0

Four or more dashes delimit the table and | separates the columns. The :abc at the end sets the class for the table and it is optional.

Blockquote

A table with a single cell is rendered as a blockquote:

Hello world

Code, `<code>`, escaping and extra stuff

def test():
    return "this is Python code"

Optionally a ` inside a ``...`` block can be inserted escaped with !`!.

NOTE: You can escape markmin constructions ('',``,**,~~,[,{,]},$,@) with '\' character: so \`\` can replace !`!`! escape string

The :python after the markup is also optional. If present, by default, it is used to set the class of the <code> block. The behavior can be overridden by passing an argument extra to the render function. For example:

markmin2html("``aaa``:custom",
             extra=dict(custom=lambda text: 'x'+text+'x'))

generates

'xaaax'

(the ``...``:custom block is rendered by the custom=lambda function passed to render).

Html5 support

Markmin also supports the <video> and <audio> html5 tags using the notation:

[[message link video]]
[[message link audio]]

[[message [title] link video]]
[[message [title] link audio]]

where message will be shown in brousers without HTML5 video/audio tags support.

Latex and other extensions

Formulas can be embedded into HTML with $$formula$$. You can use Google charts to render the formula:

LATEX = '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=%s" />'
markmin2html(text,{'latex':lambda code: LATEX % code.replace('"','\"')})

Code with syntax highlighting

This requires a syntax highlighting tool, such as the web2py CODE helper.

extra={'code_cpp':lambda text: CODE(text,language='cpp').xml(),
       'code_java':lambda text: CODE(text,language='java').xml(),
       'code_python':lambda text: CODE(text,language='python').xml(),
       'code_html':lambda text: CODE(text,language='html').xml()}

or simple:

extra={'code':lambda text,lang='': CODE(text,language=lang).xml()}

markmin2html(text,extra=extra)

Code can now be marked up as in this example:

``
<html><body>example</body></html>
``:code_html

``
<html><body>example</body></html>
``:code[html]

Citations and References

Citations are treated as internal links in html and proper citations in latex if there is a final section called "References". Items like

- [[key]] value

in the References will be translated into Latex

\bibitem{key} value

Here is an example of usage:

As shown in Ref.``mdipierro``:cite

## References
- [[mdipierro]] web2py Manual, 3rd Edition, lulu.com

Caveats

<ul/>, <ol/>, <code/>, <table/>, <blockquote/>, <h1/>, ..., <h6/> do not have <p>...</p> around them.