Rho — semantic markup language for Node

Rho is easy-to-{read,write,understand} semantic markup language written in Node, available both for server and browser runtime.

Rho is not Markdown, although it takes a lot of ideas from modern plain-text-to-html conversion tools.

Compared to Markdown, Rho features:

precise structuring of complex blocks (code blocks within lists, sublists, etc.);
powerful selectors mechanism which allows decorating blocks with the most anticipated id and class attributes;
more strict rules -- there is only one way of doing each feature;
API-level extensibility by providing resolveLink(id) and resolveImage(id) which can use data sources for resolving [reference-style links][id] and ![reference-style images][id];
reduced feature set: no blockquotes, no reference-style links in document, no whitespace-indented code blocks, no variations in list markers and heading styles, no line breaks syntax.

Syntax

Please check out the Rho Syntax Reference.

Installing

npm install -g rho

Depending on your environment you may require super-user privileges to install Rho globally. If this is your case, prepend the above command with sudo.

Usage

To use Rho with your Node application simply require it:

var rho = require("rho");

Synchronous rendering

If you have small texts (< 50K) you should be OK with synchronous rendering:

var html = rho.toHtml(sourceText);

Asynchronous rendering

With large documents in a concurrent environment (e.g. in a web application) it might be a good idea to stick with asynchronous rendering:

rho.render(sourceText, function(err, html) {
  // `html` contains the resulting markup
});

In asynchronous mode each block-level element is emitted every tick.

Inline rendering

You can also render only inline-level markup:

rho.toInlineHtml(sourceText);

In inline mode all block-level elements (paragraphs, headings, lists, etc.) are not recognized. Inline mode is always synchronous.

API

Rho is designed for embedding into your applications. To learn more about all the cool things you can do with Rho please check out the sources and API docs.

Command-line interface

To make things sweet, Rho comes bundled with command-line tool:

rho -i source.txt -o output.html --stats --pretty

Please browse though rho --help for quick usage tips or refer to man rho for complete walkthrough.

Things to come

[+] common typographic enhancements

[ ] support for macros

[+] browser version

License

2013 — ∞ Copyright (C) Boris Okunskiy boris@okunskiy.name (MIT license)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

RyuuGan / rho