Lunamark is a command-line program for conversion of markdown to other textual formats. Currently HTML, [dzslides] (HTML5 slides), Docbook, ConTeXt, LaTeX, and Groff man are the supported output formats, but it is easy to add new writers or modify existing ones. The markdown parser is written using a PEG grammar and can also be modified by the user.
This is a "standalone" version of lunamark. (See also the lua library
version.) It is written in ANSI C and lua,
and compiles to an executable with no external dependencies. It is as portable
as lua and has very good performance. It is about the same speed as the
author's own C library peg-markdown, an
order of magnitude faster than pandoc, two orders of magnitude faster than
Markdown.pl
, and three orders of magnitude faster than markdown.lua
.
Lunamark's markdown parser currently supports a number of extensions (which can be turned on or off individually), including:
- Smart typography (fancy quotes, dashes, ellipses)
- Significant start numbers in ordered lists
- Footnotes
- Definition lists
- Pandoc-style title blocks
- Flexible metadata using lua declarations
See the lunamark man page for a complete list.
It is very easy to extend the library by modifying the writers, adding new writers, and even modifying the markdown parser. Some simple examples are given in the [API documentation].
Benchmarks (converting a 1M test file consisting of 25 copies of the markdown test suite concatenated together):
0.03s sundown
0.13s redcarpet
0.14s discount
-> 0.35s lunamark + luajit
0.50s peg-markdown
-> 0.63s lunamark + lua
2.79s PHP Markdown
4.74s RedCloth
4.97s pandoc
56.75s Markdown.pl
996.14s markdown.lua
Benchmarks on a 42K file (where startup time becomes significant):
0.008s sundown
0.011s discount
-> 0.030s lunamark + luajit
0.037s peg-markdown
-> 0.046s lunamark + lua
0.111s redcarpet
0.292s pandoc
0.294s Markdown.pl
0.402s RedCloth
0.961s markdown.lua
On a linux, mac osx, or freebsd system, just Get the source and type 'make'.
git clone http://github.com/jgm/lunamark-standalone.git
cd lunamark-standalone
make
This should produce an executable lunamark
and a man page lunamark.1
.
You should copy these to appropriate locations.
The source directory contains a large test suite in tests
.
This includes existing Markdown and PHP Markdown tests, plus more
tests for lunamark-specific features and additional corner cases.
To run the tests, use scripts/shtest
.
scripts/shtest --help # get usage
scripts/shtest # run all tests
scripts/shtest indent # run all tests matching "indent"
scripts/shtest -p Markdown.pl -t # run all tests using Markdown.pl, and normalize using 'tidy'
Lunamark currently fails four of the PHP Markdown tests:
-
tests/PHP_Markdown/Quotes in attributes.test
: The HTML is semantically equivalent; using the-t/--tidy
option tobin/shtest
makes the test pass. -
tests/PHP_Markdown/Email auto links.test
: The HTML is semantically equivalent. PHP markdown does entity obfuscation, and lunamark does not. This feature could be added easily enough, but the test would still fail, because the obfuscation involves randomness. Again, using the-t/--tidy
option makes the test pass. -
tests/PHP_Markdown/Ins & del.test
: PHP markdown puts extra<p>
tags around<ins>hello</ins>
, while lunamark does not. It's hard to tell from the markdown spec which behavior is correct. -
tests/PHP_Markdown/Emphasis.test
: A bunch of corner cases with nested strong and emphasized text. These corner cases are left undecided by the markdown spec, so in my view the PHP test suite is not normative here; I think lunamark's behavior is perfectly reasonable, and I see no reason to change.
lunamark is released under the MIT license.
Most of the library is written by John MacFarlane. Hans Hagen made some major performance improvements. Khaled Hosny added the original ConTeXt writer.
The [dzslides] HTML, CSS, and javascript code is by Paul Rouget, released under the DWTFYWT Public License.