On the next iteration for Microdown you may find Djot [1] interesting,
as it is also trying to be familiar to Markdown users, while fixing the
several of its shortcomings and making parsers easier to build, by
having a clearer non-ambiguous syntax, that doesn't require look ahead
mechanisms. I think that Djot may share the Microdow design principles
stated at [2] regarding [2a] familiarity to Markdown [2b] Small uniform
core and [2c] extensibility. Umm... I wonder, given that one of the
selling points of Djot is the easiness of implementing parsers, how
difficult could be to implement a Djot parser and connect it to the
Pillar infrastructure?
Following the idea quoted at the beginning blog post at [3] trying to "
to create a light markup syntax that keeps what is good about Markdown,
while revising some of the features that have led to bloat and
complexity" and finding the sweet spot between popular options and added
value, without being tied by popularity or the past, is a worth
exploration. It help us, as a community, to reach the people where they
are. Even more considering how Markdown is a popular but clumsy standard
de facto (<flame> kind of the Git/GitHub of the light Markup languages,
promoted greatly by its GitHub usage </flame>).
In my case, given the constrains in computer labs where installing
Pandoc can be cumbersome, using Markdeep has been an important time
saver, even if we need to fork[4] its main repository to document
publicly its possibilities and shortcomings. A natively fully supported
and well defined light format in Pharo, like Microdown or Djot, could
help us a lot in our documentation workflows, given our limited
resources[^a]. And, because of the shared design sensibilities behind
both formats, I would like to have Microdown more inspired in Djot than
in "wild Markdown". The efforts in having a "popular alike" format
totally supported in the image are greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Offray
== Links and footnotes
[1] https://djot.net/
[2]
https://rmod-files.lille.inria.fr/Team/Texts/Papers/Duca20a-Microdown-IWST.pdf
[3]
https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/02/02/blogging_in_djot_instead_of_markdown/
[4] https://github.com/ruidajo/markdeep/
[^a]: I'm half of the population of the two active Smalltalkers/Pharoers
in my country, working in the language part time. We need to cleverly
combine resources with a low complexity/expressivity ratio, that's where
our combination of tools like Pharo/GT, Fossil, Markdeep, Pandoc comes from.
On 27/03/24 2:48, stephane ducasse wrote:
I released yesterday the version 9.0.1 of pillar for Pharo 11.
And I will restart a new iteration on Microdown.
- better support for math
- introducing >
and more as time allows.
S
On 27 Mar 2024, at 01:25, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas
<offray.l...@mutabit.com> wrote:
Pretty cool!
One of my ideas with Grafoscopio was to be able to read interactive
documentation inside Pharo, which was obtained in a pretty primitive
way. Now I have moved to Lepiter as a GUI of our documentation
workflows and Markdeep as a default format for storage and web
rendering. But seeing the advances in Microdown and its interactive
viewer is pretty inspiring. I hope to check some Pharo books
prepackaged with upcoming releases.
Keep the good work,
Offray
On 14/03/24 9:40, stephane ducasse wrote:
Hi Richard
I did not see your original post because I messed up with my account.
But thanks for your email :)
Now the cool stuff if that we can also read the books from within Pharo.
We should improve the Microdown renderer and suddenly we will get
shiny cool
documentation.
S
This is a new thread because it's not limited to any specific topic.
If you have questions about Pharo, especially "how do I do <this> in
Pharo", you can always ask in this mailing list. You can, if you like
playing Russian Roulette, ask a Large Language Model "AI".
But there is an amazing resource you should really trye.
books.pharo.org
Did you ever wonder where the manual for Pharo was?
That's where. The site lists a bunch of Pharo books and booklets,
all of which have free PDFs except for two of the books.
In particular, you'll always want the most recent edition of
"Pharo by Example" handy.
These books are really useful. They are written by people know know
their material thoroughly and do a good job of explaining it. If you
want to make any serious use of Pharo, or even to have more happiness
than headaches just playing with it, you owe it to yourself to get the
free PDFs What do we owe the authors? Well, if you're not trying to
make one pension support four people, you owe them the purchase of
some of the books. Me, I'm giving them thanks, praise, and a
heartfelt recommendation.
Seriously, these books represent a HUGE amount of work and "you are a
fool to yourself and a burden to others" if you don't take advantage
of this great resource.
Stéphane Ducasse
http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr
06 30 93 66 73
"If you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do
differently? ....ESPECIALLY if, by doing something different, today
might not be your last day on earth.” Calvin & Hobbes
