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Re: generic viewer for md files



Hi Faidon,

Quoting Faidon Liambotis (2022-01-24 15:03:44)
> On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 02:12:06PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > Personally I am of the opinion that more ideally such documentation 
> > should be treated as a source format with two targets - html and 
> > plaintext - and that both those target formats should be generated 
> > during package build and installed with the binary package(s).
> > 
> > For Github-flavored Markdown I recommend to render both target 
> > formats using the command-line tool cmark-gfm.  Here is an example 
> > of that: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/doctest/-/commit/d9b848b
> > 
> > For most other flavors of Markdown I recommend to render using 
> > pandoc. Here is an example of that: 
> > https://salsa.debian.org/js-team/twitter-bootstrap3/-/commit/f138bf1
> > 
> > For Gitlab-flavored Markdown there are currently no parser in 
> > Debian, but depending on the actual markup used you might get away 
> > with pandoc + a filter (but may then give up on rendering as 
> > plaintext).  Here is an example of that: 
> > https://salsa.debian.org/matrix-team/olm/-/commit/094396d
> > 
> > Feel free to reach out if you need help juggling Markdown or using 
> > pandoc.  I am no expert, but am interested, and am in touch with the 
> > author if all else fails ;-)
> 
> I maintain "lowdown" in Debian. It supports several markup extensions 
> including several from GFM and CommonMark, and can output in HTML5, 
> roff (man/ms), LaTeX, ODF etc. It also has a terminal output mode, 
> that can be used to format and view Markdown documents in a pager.

There are _many_ markdown tools...

Lowdown indeed has some interesting features as interactive Markdown 
*reader* - thanks for mentioning.  Package description however does not 
mention if _always_ a superset of markdown/CommonMark is parsed or the 
tool can be told to parse conservatively as well - perhaps relevant to 
add such information to the package long description?

For *packaging* Markdown-authored documentation, where common format is 
html and plaintext, I still recommend to first consider more 
conservative and lightweight options¹, then more conservative yet heavy 
options² - i.e. only consider exciting tools when boring ones are 
unsuitable.


 - Jonas

¹ cmark is commonly regarded as one of the most conservative and 
lightweight - see e.g.  
https://github.blog/2017-03-14-a-formal-spec-for-github-markdown/

² yes pandoc is big but battle-tested and exact about which flavors are 
parsed.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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