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:

(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

SOURCEOUTPUT
# titletitle
## sectionsection
### subsectionsubsection
**bold**bold
''italic''italic
~~strikeout~~strikeout
``verbatim``verbatim
``color with **bold**``:redcolor with bold
``many colors``:color[blue:#ffff00]many colors
http://google.comhttp://google.com
[[**click** me #myanchor]]click me
[[click me [extra info] #myanchor popup]]click me

More on links

The format is always [[title link]] or [[title [extra] link]]. Notice you can nest bold, italic, strikeout and code inside the link title.

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

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

Ordered Lists

+ Dog
+ Cat
+ Mouse

is rendered as

  1. Dog
  2. Cat
  3. Mouse

Multilevel Lists

+ Dogs
 -- red
 -- brown
 -- black
+ Cats
 -- fluffy
 -- smooth
 -- bald
+ Mice
 -- small
 -- big
 -- huge

is rendered as

  1. Dogs
  2. Cats
  3. Mice

Tables (with optional header and/or footer)

Something like this

-----------------
**A**|**B**|**C**
=================
  0  |  0  |  X
  0  |  X  |  0
  X  |  0  |  0
=================
**D**|**F**|**G**
-----------------:abc[id]
is a table and is rendered as
ABC
00X
0X0
X00
DFG
Four or more dashes delimit the table and | separates the columns. The :abc, :id[abc_1] or :abc[abc_1] at the end sets the class and/or id for the table and it is optional.

Blockquote

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

Hello world

Blockquote can contain headers, paragraphs, lists and tables:

-----
  This is a paragraph in a blockquote

  + item 1
  + item 2
  -- item 2.1
  -- item 2.2
  + item 3

  ---------
  0 | 0 | X
  0 | X | 0
  X | 0 | 0
  ---------:tableclass1
-----

is rendered as:

This is a paragraph in a blockquote
  1. item 1
  2. item 2
    • item 2.1
    • item 2.2
  3. item 3
00X
0X0
X00

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='python': 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
OR
``
<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

This is a test block with new features:

This is a blockquote with a list with tables in it:

This is a paragraph before list. You can continue paragraph on the next lines.
This is an ordered list with tables:
  1. Item 1
  2. Item 2
  3. aabbcc
    112233
  4. Item 4
    T1T2t3
    aaabbbccc
    dddfffggg
    12305.0

This this a new paragraph with a table. Table has header, footer, sections, odd and even rows:

Title 1Title 2Title 3
data 1data 22.00
data 3data4(long)23.00
data 533.50
New sectionNew data5.00
data 1data2(long)100.45
data 312.50
data 4data 5.33
data 6data7(long)8.01
data 8514
Total:9 items698,79

Multilevel lists

Now lists can be multilevel:

  1. Ordered item 1 on level 1. You can continue item text on next strings
    1. Ordered item 1 of sublevel 2 with a paragraph (paragraph can start with point after plus or minus characters, e.g. ++. or --.)

    2. This is another item. But with 3 paragraphs, blockquote and sublists:

      This is the second paragraph in the item. You can add paragraphs to an item, using point notation, where first characters in the string are sequence of points with space between them and another string. For example, this paragraph (in sublevel 2) starts with two points:

      .. This is the second paragraph...

      this is a blockquote in a list

      You can use blockquote with headers, paragraphs, tables and lists in it:
      Tables can have or have not header and footer. This table is defined without any header and footer in it:
      redfox0
      bluedolphin1000
      greenleaf10000

      This is yet another paragraph in the item.

      • This is an item of unordered list (sublevel 3)
      • This is the second item of the unordered list (sublevel 3)
            1. This is a single item of ordered list in sublevel 6

          and this is a paragraph in sublevel 4

      • This is a new item with paragraph in sublevel 3.

        1. Start ordered list in sublevel 4 with code block:
          line 1
            line 2
               line 3
        2. Yet another item with code block:

            line 1
          line 2
            line 3
          This item finishes with this paragraph.

        Item in sublevel 3 can be continued with paragraphs.

          this is another
        code block
            in the
          sublevel 3 item
      1. The last item in sublevel 3

      This is a continuous paragraph for item 2 in sublevel 2. You can use such structure to create difficult structured documents.

    3. item 3 in sublevel 2
    • item 1 in sublevel 2 (new unordered list)
    • item 2 in sublevel 2
    • item 3 in sublevel 2
    1. item 1 in sublevel 2 (new ordered list)
    2. item 2 in sublevel 2
    3. item 3 in sublevle 2
  2. item 2 in level 1
  3. item 3 in level 1

This is the last section of the test

Single paragraph with '----' in it will be turned into separator:


And this is the last paragraph in the test. Be happy!

## References - [[mdipierro]] web2py Manual, 5th Edition, lulu.com

Caveats

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