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Markdown processing tools, including mdmerge

Project description

MarkdownTools

MarkdownTools is a collection of command line utilities for processing Markdown text files. At the moment the collection includes only one utility: mdmerge. Over time additional utilities will be added to support Markdown workflows.

Note: if you are using Python 2, then you need the MarkdownTools2 package.

mdmerge

mdmerge is a command line utility that produces a single Markdown document by merging a set of Markdown documents. The merge can be accomplished by expanding include declarations found in the input files, by concatenating a list of files found in an index file, or both.

Wait, doesn’t Marked 2 already do that?

Brett Terpstra’s Marked 2 application is a GUI product that runs on OS X; it watches Markdown text and displays the formatted output; it has extensive support for multi-file Markdown documents. Marked is my tool of choice for viewing formatted Markdown. I use it whenever I’m creating or reviewing Markdown content on my OS X machine. The invaluable multi-file document support in Marked is what drove me to create mdmerge.

mdmerge brings multi-file Markdown document processing to the command line. It is useful in any automated scripting environment where Markdown is processed. For example, I use it in automated build scripts (e.g., using gmake or Grunt) to produce documentation for the software I’m building. It is cross-platform; you can pre-process the Markdown files on any common OS that has a recent version of Python.

What kinds of Markdown does it work with?

mdmerge has been tested with documents containing these Markdown syntax variants:

How do files get included?

mdmerge accepts include declarations in these styles:

Includes can be nested; that is, a file can include another file that itself include other files, and so on. Index (or book) files are only processed as such when they are the primary input; they cannot be nested – files listed in the index file are treated as normal input files (including expanding include specifications found within).

Command Line Syntax

The command line looks like this:

mdmerge [options] [-o outputfile] inputfiles
mdmerge [options] [-o outputfile] -

Options

options

One or more of –book, –export-target, –ignore-transclusions, –just-raw, –leanpub, –version, –help, -h.

--book

Treat STDIN as an index file (a “book” file).

--export-target [html|latex|lyx|opml|rtf|odf]

Indicates the ultimate output target of the markdown processor, but primarily impacts wildcard substitution in Marked inclusion.

--help

Help information

-h

Help information

--ignore-transclusions

Leave any MultiMarkdown transclusion specifications alone; do not include the specified file. Useful if you want to mix Marked/LeanPub includes and MultiMarkdown includes, but have MultiMarkdown handline the transclusions.

--just-raw

Ignore all include specifications except for raw includes; useful for processing the output of the Markdown processor to pick up the raw file include specifications that should have passed through untouched.

--leanpub

Indicates that any input file named book.txt should be treated as a LeanPub index file.

--version

Gives the version information about the utility.

-o outputfile

The filepath in which to store the merged text. If not specified, then STDOUT is used.

--outfile outputfile

same as -o.

inputfiles

A list of space separated input files that can be merged together. If multiple files are given, they are treated as if they were specified in a LeanPub index file.

-

The input comes from STDIN.

Installation

Note: Requires Python 3.3 or later. For Python 2 environments use the MarkdownTools2 package.

Install with:

pip install MarkdownTools

This will create the command mdmerge. Use mdmerge --version and mdmerge --help to confirm the installation.

For developers

Source code

The source for this project can be found on GitHub at:

https://github.com/JeNeSuisPasDave/MarkdownTools

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