I am seeing cases where the Comments field retrieved by Calibre is in what looks like Markdown Syntax (for a simple example look at "Off the Mangrove Coast" by Louis L'Amour). When Calibre adds this comment it appears that it is being enclosed in a <div> and <p> tag to support rich Text Editing in the GUI comments field. I am trying to produce a web page incorporating this comment field, and the presence of the HTML tags stops markdown processing from operating on the field to give a better formatted comment.
It seems to me I that there are several options available
- I hard-code knowledge of Calibre's enclosing tags and remove them so that I can apply Markdown processing. I am not enamoured of this approach as any change at the Calibre level is liable to break my code. It also does not benefit the average Calibre user.
- Calibre does not put those tags around the Comments field if the text is plain text. This would mean that later Markdown processing is possible relatively easily. At the moment I am not sure what the Calibre Content Server does with Markdown syntax in comments (if anything).
- Calibre processes the markdown at the point of receipt and converts it to (X)HTML before inserting it into the Comments field.
There may be options I have missed - anyone want to comment on that? Also are there related issues that I have missed in my initial analysis?
Of the options I have listed, the most effective to me seems the last one of converting to HTML at the point the Markdown hits Calibre. If that is what others think I will look at raising an appropriate ticket for an enhancement request. I can then look at whether I can work out the Calibre patch to go with the request, but first I thought I would solicit advice on the best way to proceed.