Multimarkdown instead of markdown

[anywho]

Does anyone know if kovidgoyal has considered using multimarkdown instead of markdown? Multimarkdown is a superset which is way more powerful than regular markdown. It also allows easy conversion to other formats so there's incentive to use it even without Calibre for conversion.

http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/

http://fletcher.github.io/peg-multim...mmd-manual.pdf

[kovidgoyal]

I dont maintain the txt input plugin, the person you need to ask is user_none

[anywho]

Thanks for the quick response. Hopefully user_none monitors the forums as dilgently as you and will see this post.

[anywho]

Btw, thanks for this awesome software.

[kovidgoyal]

You're welcome

[user_none]

Multimarkdown looks like it just adds some extensions to markdown (as far as input goes). From a cursory look what's added to the markdown format by multimarkdown is already supported by extensions provided by Python Markdown.

Right now the footnotes and tables extensions are the only ones enabled. I might be a good idea to check what other extensions we're including and allow those to be optionally enabled. I believe only footnotes and tables were enabled because some of the others were tripping people up when enabled.

[anywho]

Originally Posted by user_none

Multimarkdown looks like it just adds some extensions to markdown (as far as input goes). From a cursory look what's added to the markdown format by multimarkdown is already supported by extensions provided by Python Markdown.

Right now the footnotes and tables extensions are the only ones enabled. I might be a good idea to check what other extensions we're including and allow those to be optionally enabled. I believe only footnotes and tables were enabled because some of the others were tripping people up when enabled.

One of the reasons I was wanting it is because of the easy step from multimarkdown to full LaTeX documentation to create really nice documentation or books as PDF. I think multimarkdown would have a nice advantage there.

Basically it's really nice to have a portable write-once solution. The meta-data that you can put into multimarkdown is quite handy where the markdown solution that I think you support does not. You explicitly have to specify things such as author, title, etc etc whilst in MMD you don't.

Did you have a look at the metadata attributes at all?

[user_none]

Originally Posted by anywho

One of the reasons I was wanting it is because of the easy step from multimarkdown to full LaTeX documentation to create really nice documentation or books as PDF. I think multimarkdown would have a nice advantage there.

You misunderstand how calibre's conversion process works. Multimarkdown as a program doesn't fit into calibre at all.

Calibre's input plugins convert to OEB. OEB is the intermediate format. All output plugins take OEB and convert it to the output format. In this way any supported input format can be converted to any supported output format. Multimarkdown as a perl script simply does not work with calibre. Also, compared to calibre it's quite limited as a conversion solution.

Originally Posted by anywho

Basically it's really nice to have a portable write-once solution. The meta-data that you can put into multimarkdown is quite handy where the markdown solution that I think you support does not. You explicitly have to specify things such as author, title, etc etc whilst in MMD you don't.

This is not an issue of calibre not allowing you to specify metadata in the file itself. It's an issue of calibre not supporting the metadata extension to the markdown syntax at this time.

Originally Posted by anywho

Did you have a look at the metadata attributes at all?

Again, the metadata format is an extension to the markdown format that's already supported by Python Markdown (which calibre uses internally for parsing markdown input). That extension is simply not enabled at this time. Hence the comment about allowing users to enable additional extensions in addition to the two that are by default and always enabled.

[anywho]

Multimarkdown as a perl script simply does not work with calibre.

It's not been a perl script for a long time AFAIK. I think it started as one but no longer.

[~]$ file `which multimarkdown`
/usr/local/bin/multimarkdown: Mach-O 64-bit executable

This is not an issue of calibre not allowing you to specify metadata in the file itself. It's an issue of calibre not supporting the metadata extension to the markdown syntax at this time.

OK, enabling these extensions sound promising. Hopefully that's still compatible with MMD then, because as mentioned, the LaTeX conversion is quite desired.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by anywho

It's not been a perl script for a long time AFAIK. I think it started as one but no longer.

[~]$ file `which multimarkdown`
/usr/local/bin/multimarkdown: Mach-O 64-bit executable

It's still not compatible with cailbre's conversion system. Again calibre uses OEB as an intermediate format. All output plugins must convert from OEB. Multimarkdown taking markdown as the input can't be used as part of calibre's output system because the output system provides OEB not markdown. The input format is not directly fed to an output plugin. Only the intermediate format is.

Originally Posted by anywho

OK, enabling these extensions sound promising. Hopefully that's still compatible with MMD then, because as mentioned, the LaTeX conversion is quite desired.

Latex output is completely separate from enhancements to the markdown syntax calibre supports. Adding multimarkdown as part of calibre to get latex output isn't possible.

[anywho]

Originally Posted by user_none

Latex output is completely separate from enhancements to the markdown syntax calibre supports. Adding multimarkdown as part of calibre to get latex output isn't possible.

Now it's your turn to misunderstand. I'm simply saying that I'm hoping to be able to use both MMD and multimarkdown with the extensions you mentioned so that I can still have the write-once document.

Iow. I'm hoping a file.md can be parsed with both MMD and the multimarkdown + extensions you're talking about for Calibre.

[user_none]

The ability to enable/disable various Markdown extensions has been added for the next release. I don't know how well the meta plugin works though... It will put the markdown metadata into the html but I'm not sure if it's read back out.

[anywho]

awesome.thanks! we'll see what happens is there a list of which ones and how to utilize them? i.e. some docs?

[user_none]

The conversion GUI for txt input will give you a the name and description. You can see more information about each extension here.

Some extensions are excluded from being enabled. This is either due to the extension being added in a newer version of PyMarkdown than calibre is using. Or the extension really doesn't make any sense for calibre to enable.

[anywho]

much thanks looking forward to trying