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<h1 id='maruku_a_markdownsuperset_interpreter'>Mar<strong>u</strong>k<strong>u</strong>: a Markdown-superset interpreter</h1>
<p><a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/'>Maruku</a> is a Markdown interpreter written in <a href='http://www.ruby-lang.org'>Ruby</a>.</p>
<p>Maruku allows you to write in an easy-to-read-and-write syntax, like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/maruku.md'>This document in Markdown</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then it can be translated to HTML:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/maruku.html'>This document in HTML</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>or LaTeX, which is then converted to PDF:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/maruku.pdf'>This document in PDF</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maruku implements:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>the original <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/markdown_syntax.html'>Markdown syntax</a> (<a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/markdown_syntax.html'>HTML</a> or <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/markdown_syntax.pdf'>PDF</a>), translated by Maruku).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>all the improvements in <a href='http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/'>PHP Markdown Extra</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>a new <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html'>meta-data syntax</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Authors</strong>: Maruku has been developed so far by <a href='http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~acensi/'>Andrea Censi</a>. Contributors are most welcome!</p>
<p><strong>The name of the game</strong>: Maruku is the <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji'>romaji</a> translitteration of the <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana'>katakana</a> translitteration of “Mark”, the first word in Markdown. I chose this name because Ruby is Japanese, and also the sillable “ru” appears in Maruku.</p>
<hr />
<p>Table of contents: (<strong>auto-generated by Maruku!</strong>)</p>
<div class='maruku_toc'><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>1. </span><a href='#release_notes'>Release notes</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>2. </span><a href='#download'>Download</a><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>2.1. </span><a href='#bugs_report'>Bugs report</a></li></ul></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>3. </span><a href='#usage'>Usage</a><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>3.1. </span><a href='#from_the_command_line'>From the command line</a></li></ul></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>4. </span><a href='#extra'>Examples of PHP Markdown Extra syntax</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>5. </span><a href='#maruku-and-bluecloth'>Maruku and Bluecloth</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>6. </span><a href='#meta'>New meta-data syntax</a><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.1. </span><a href='#metadata_for_blocklevel_and_spanlevel_elements'>Meta-data for block-level and span-level elements</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.2. </span><a href='#metadata_for_the_document'>Meta-data for the document</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.3. </span><a href='#metalist'>List of meta-data</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.4. </span><a href='#examples'>Examples</a></li></ul></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>7. </span><a href='#features'>Other Features</a><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.1. </span><a href='#automatic_generation_of_the_table_of_contents'>Automatic generation of the table of contents</a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.2. </span><a href='#this_header_contains_emphasis_strong_text_and_'>This header contains <em>emphasis</em> <strong>strong text</strong> and <code>code</code></a></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.3. </span><a href='#use_html_entities'>Use HTML entities</a></li></ul></li><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>8. </span><a href='#future'>Future developments</a><ul style='list-style: none;'><li><span class='maruku_section_number'>8.1. </span><a href='#a_syntax_for_adding_math'>A syntax for adding math</a></li></ul></li></ul></div><hr />
<h2 id='release_notes'><span class='maruku_section_number'>1. </span>Release notes</h2>
<p>Note: Maruku seems to be very robust, nevertheless it is still beta-level software. So if you want to use it in production environments, please check back in a month or so, while we squash the remaining bugs.</p>
<p>In the meantime, feel free to toy around, and please signal problems, request features, by <a href='http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~acensi/contact.html'>contacting me</a> or using the <a href='http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=2795'>tracker</a>. For issues about the Markdown syntax itself and improvements to it, please write to the <a href='http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss'>Markdown-discuss mailing list</a>.</p>
<p>Have fun!</p>
<h4 id='changes_in_041_aka_typographer'>Changes in 0.4.1 aka “Typographer”</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Implemented SmartyPants support:</p>
<pre><code>'Twas a "test" to 'remember' -- in the '90s
--- while I was <<ok>>. She was 6\"12\'.</code></pre>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Twas a “test” to ‘remember’ – in the ’90s — while I was «ok». She was 6"12'.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I adapted the code from RubyPants.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Server directives between <code><? ?></code> are properly preserved.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Changes in LaTeX export:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Now Japanese text rendering sort of works, using the following packages:</p>
<pre><code>\usepackage[C40]{fontenc}
\usepackage[cjkjis]{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
</code></pre>
<p>Nevertheless, I could only get bitmap fonts working – probably it’s a problem with my setup.</p>
<p>A quick test: 日本、中国、ひらがな、カタカナ。</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed bugs in rendering of immediate links.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>External packages are <code>require</code>d only if needed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>More symbols supported. See the symbol list <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/entity_test.html'>in HTML</a> and <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/entity_test.pdf'>in PDF</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h4 id='changes_in_04'>Changes in 0.4</h4>
<ul>
<li>First implementation of <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html'>the new meta-data syntax</a>.</li>
<li>General refactorization of the code and much cleaner error reporting.</li>
<li>Created <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/rdoc/'>the RDOC documentation</a>.</li>
<li>The <code>add_whitespace</code> method took too much time – it was O(n^2).</li>
<li>Added unit-tests for block-level elements.</li>
</ul>
<h4 id='changes_in_03'>Changes in 0.3</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<p>A real parser is used instead of a regexp-based system, also for span-level elements.</p>
<p>Now Maruku is almost 2x faster than Bluecloth, while having more features.</p>
<p>Here are some benchmarks:</p>
<pre><code>BlueCloth (to_html): parsing 0.00 sec + rendering 1.54 sec = 1.55 sec
Maruku (to_html): parsing 0.47 sec + rendering 0.38 sec = 0.85 sec
Maruku (to_latex): parsing 0.49 sec + rendering 0.25 sec = 0.73 sec</code></pre>
<p>This is the result of running <code>lib/maruku/tests/benchmark.rb</code> on the Markdown specification.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Prettier HTML output by adding whitespace.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a full suite of unit-tests for the span-level parser.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Error management: Having a real parser, Maruku warns you about syntax issues.</p>
<p>The default action is to warn and try to continue. If you do this:</p>
<pre><code>Maruku.new(string, {:on_error => :raise})
</code></pre>
<p>then syntax errors will cause an exception to be raised (you can catch this and retry).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed a series of bugs in handling inline HTML code.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Immediate TODO-list:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>UTF-8 input/output works OK for HTML, however I am having pain trying to export to LaTeX. I want at least Japanese characters support, so if you know how to do this you are very welcome to give me an hand.</p>
<p>For example: in the HTML version, you should see accented characters in this parenthesis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(àèìòù)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and Japanese text in these other parentheses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(カタカナで 私の 名前は アンドレア チェンシ です).</p>
<p>(日本のガルは 大好き、でも、日本語は難しですから、そうぞ 英語話すガルを おしえてください).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the LaTeX version, these do not appear. I know how to do LaTeX with ISO-8859-1 encoding (European characters), but I’m struggling with half-baked solutions for UTF-8 encoded documents.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implement the <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html'>new meta-data proposal</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Exporting to Markdown (pretty printing).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Exporting to HTML splitting in multiple files.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>RubyPants.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Support for images in PDF.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id='download'><span class='maruku_section_number'>2. </span>Download</h2>
<p>The development site is <a href='http://rubyforge.org/projects/maruku/'>http://rubyforge.org/projects/maruku/</a>.</p>
<p>Install with:</p>
<pre class='sh' style='background-color: #efefff;'>$ gem install maruku</pre>
<p>Released files can also be seen at <a href='http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=2795'>http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=2795</a>.</p>
<p>Anonymous access to the repository is possible with:</p>
<pre class='sh' style='background-color: #efefff;'>$ svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/maruku</pre>
<p>If you want commit access to the repository, just create an account on Rubyforge and <a href='http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~acensi/contact.html'>drop me a mail</a>.</p>
<h3 id='bugs_report'><span class='maruku_section_number'>2.1. </span>Bugs report</h3>
<p>Use the <a href='http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=2795'>tracker</a> or <a href='http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~acensi/contact.html'>drop me an email</a>.</p>
<h2 id='usage'><span class='maruku_section_number'>3. </span>Usage</h2>
<p>This is the basic usage:</p>
<pre class='ruby' style='background-color: #efffef;'><span class='ident'>require</span> <span class='punct'>'</span><span class='string'>rubygems</span><span class='punct'>'</span>
<span class='ident'>require</span> <span class='punct'>'</span><span class='string'>maruku</span><span class='punct'>'</span>
<span class='ident'>doc</span> <span class='punct'>=</span> <span class='constant'>Maruku</span><span class='punct'>.</span><span class='ident'>new</span><span class='punct'>(</span><span class='ident'>markdown_string</span><span class='punct'>)</span>
<span class='ident'>puts</span> <span class='ident'>doc</span><span class='punct'>.</span><span class='ident'>to_html</span></pre>
<p>The method <code>to_html</code> outputs only an HTML fragment, while the method <code>to_html_document</code> outputs a complete XHTML 1.0 document:</p>
<pre class='ruby' style='background-color: #efffef;'><span class='ident'>puts</span> <span class='ident'>doc</span><span class='punct'>.</span><span class='ident'>to_html_document</span></pre>
<p>You can have the REXML document tree with:</p>
<pre class='ruby' style='background-color: #efffef;'><span class='ident'>tree</span> <span class='punct'>=</span> <span class='ident'>doc</span><span class='punct'>.</span><span class='ident'>to_html_document_tree</span></pre>
<h3 id='from_the_command_line'><span class='maruku_section_number'>3.1. </span>From the command line</h3>
<p>There are two command-line programs installed: <code>maruku</code> and <code>marutex</code>.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><code>maruku</code> converts Markdown to HTML:</p>
<pre class='sh' style='background-color: #efefff;'>$ maruku file.md # creates file.html</pre></li>
<li>
<p><code>marutex</code> converts Markdown to LaTeX, then calls <code>pdflatex</code> to transform to PDF:</p>
<pre class='sh' style='background-color: #efefff;'>$ marutex file.md # creates file.tex and file.pdf</pre></li>
</ul>
<h2 id='extra'><span class='maruku_section_number'>4. </span>Examples of PHP Markdown Extra syntax</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>tables</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code>Col1 | Very very long head | Very very long head|
-----|:-------------------:|-------------------:|
cell | center-align | right-align |</code></pre><table><thead><tr><th>Col1</th><th>Very very long head</th><th>Very very long head</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td style='text-align: left;'>cell</td><td style='text-align: center;'>center-align</td><td style='text-align: right;'>right-align</td></tr></tbody></table></li>
<li>
<p>footnotes <sup id='fnref:1'><a href='#fn:1' rel='footnote'>1</a></sup></p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code>* footnotes [^foot]
[^foot]: I really was missing those.</code></pre></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Markdown inside HTML elements</p>
<pre><code><div markdown="1" style="border: solid 1px black">
This is a div with Markdown **strong text**
</div></code></pre><div style='border: solid 1px black'>
<p>This is a div with Markdown <strong>strong text</strong></p>
</div></li>
<li>
<p>header ids</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code>## Download ## {#download}</code></pre>
<p>For example, <a href='#download'>a link to the download</a> header.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>definition lists</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code>Definition list
: something very hard to parse</code></pre>
<dl>
<dt>Definition list</dt>
<dd>something very hard to parse</dd>
</dl>
</li>
<li>
<p>abbreviations or <abbr title='Simply an abbreviation'>ABB</abbr> for short.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id='maruku-and-bluecloth'><span class='maruku_section_number'>5. </span>Maruku and Bluecloth</h2>
<p>The other Ruby implementation of Markdown is <a href='http://www.deveiate.org/projects/BlueCloth'>Bluecloth</a>.</p>
<p>Maruku is much different in philosophy from Bluecloth: the biggest difference is that <em>parsing</em> is separated from <em>rendering</em>. In Maruku, an in-memory representation of the Markdown document is created. Instead, Bluecloth mantains the document in memory as a String at all times, and does a series of <code>gsub</code> to transform to HTML.</p>
<p>The in-memory representation makes it very easy to export to various formats (at the moment HTML and LaTeX/PDF; the next is pretty-printed Markdown).</p>
<p>Other improvements over Bluecloth:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>the HTML output is provided also as a <code>REXML</code> document tree.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>PHP Markdown Syntax support.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id='meta'><span class='maruku_section_number'>6. </span>New meta-data syntax</h2>
<p>Maruku implements a syntax that allows to attach “meta” information to objects.</p>
<h3 id='metadata_for_blocklevel_and_spanlevel_elements'><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.1. </span>Meta-data for block-level and span-level elements</h3>
<p>See <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org/proposal.html'>this proposal</a>.</p>
<h3 id='metadata_for_the_document'><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.2. </span>Meta-data for the document</h3>
<p>Meta-data for the document itself is specified through the use of email headers:</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code>Title: A simple document containing meta-headers
CSS: style.css
Content of the document
</code></pre>
<p>When creating the document through</p>
<pre class='ruby' style='background-color: #efffef;'><span class='constant'>Maruku</span><span class='punct'>.</span><span class='ident'>new</span><span class='punct'>(</span><span class='ident'>s</span><span class='punct'>).</span><span class='ident'>to_html_document</span></pre>
<p>the title and stylesheet are added as expected.</p>
<p>Meta-data keys are assumed to be case-insensitive.</p>
<hr />
<h3 id='metalist'><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.3. </span>List of meta-data</h3>
<dl>
<dt><strong><code>title</code>, <code>subject</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(document) Sets the title of the document (HTML: used in the <code>TITLE</code> element).</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>use_numbered_headers</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(document) If <code>true</code>, headers are numbered (just like this document). Default is <code>false</code>.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>css</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(document, HTML) Url of stylesheet.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>html_use_syntax</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(document, HTML) If set, use the <a href='http://syntax.rubyforge.org/'>Ruby <code>syntax</code> library</a> to add source highlighting.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>latex_use_listings</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(document, LaTeX) If set, use the fancy <a href='http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/listings/'><code>listings</code> package</a> for better displaying code blocks.</p>
<p>If not set, use standard <code>verbatim</code> environment.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>style</code>, <code>id</code>, <code>class</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(any block object, HTML) Standard CSS attributes are copied.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>lang</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>(code blocks) Name of programming language (<code>ruby</code>) for syntax highlighting.</p>
<p>Default for this is <code>code_lang</code> in document.</p>
<p>Syntax highlighting is delegated to the <a href='http://syntax.rubyforge.org/'><code>syntax</code> library</a> for HTML output and to the <a href='http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/listings/'><code>listings</code> package</a> for LaTeX output.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>code_show_spaces</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>Shows tabs and newlines (default is read in the document object).</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong><code>code_background_color</code></strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>Background color for code blocks. (default is read in the document object).</p>
<p>The format is either a named color (<code>green</code>, <code>red</code>) or a CSS color of the form <code>#ff00ff</code>.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>for <strong>HTML output</strong>, the value is put straight in the <code>background-color</code> CSS property of the block.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>for <strong>LaTeX output</strong>, if it is a named color, it must be a color accepted by the LaTeX <code>color</code> packages. If it is of the form <code>#ff00ff</code>, Maruku defines a color using the <code>\color[rgb]{r,g,b}</code> macro.</p>
<p>For example, for <code>#0000ff</code>, the macro is called as: <code>\color[rgb]{0,0,1}</code>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
<h3 id='examples'><span class='maruku_section_number'>6.4. </span>Examples</h3>
<p>An example of this is the following:</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffefef;'><code> One space
Two spaces
Tab, space, tab
Tab, tab, tab and all is green!
{code_show_spaces code_background_color=#ffeedd}</code></pre>
<p>That will produce:</p>
<pre style='background-color: #ffeedd;'><code>¬One¬space
¬¬Two¬spaces
» ¬» Tab,¬space,¬tab
» » » Tab,¬tab,¬tab¬and¬all¬is¬green!</code></pre>
<p>Or highlighting (support depends on languages):</p>
<pre><code> <div style="text-align:center">Div</div>
{lang=html}
</code></pre>
<p>produces:</p>
<pre class='xml'><span class='punct'><</span><span class='tag'>div</span> <span class='attribute'>style</span><span class='punct'>="</span><span class='string'>text-align:center</span><span class='punct'>"></span>Div<span class='punct'></</span><span class='tag'>div</span><span class='punct'>></span></pre><hr />
<h2 id='features'><span class='maruku_section_number'>7. </span>Other Features</h2>
<h3 id='automatic_generation_of_the_table_of_contents'><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.1. </span>Automatic generation of the table of contents</h3>
<p>If you create a list, and then set the <code>toc</code> attribute, when rendering Maruku will create an auto-generated table of contents.</p>
<pre><code>* This will become a table of contents (this text will be scraped).
{toc}
</code></pre>
<p>You can see an example of this at the beginning of this document.</p>
<h3 id='this_header_contains_emphasis_strong_text_and_'><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.2. </span>This header contains <em>emphasis</em> <strong>strong text</strong> and <code>code</code></h3>
<p>Note that this header contains formatting and it still works, also in the table of contents.</p>
<p>And <a href='#features'>This is a <em>link</em> with <strong>all</strong> <strong><em>sort</em></strong> of <code>weird stuff</code></a> in the text.</p>
<h3 id='use_html_entities'><span class='maruku_section_number'>7.3. </span>Use HTML entities</h3>
<p>If you want to use HTML entities, go on! We will take care of the translation to LaTeX:</p>
<table><thead><tr><th>Entity</th><th>Result</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td style='text-align: left;'><code>&copy;</code></td><td style='text-align: left;'>©</td></tr><tr><td style='text-align: left;'><code>&pound;</code></td><td style='text-align: left;'>£</td></tr><tr><td style='text-align: left;'><code>a&nbsp;b</code></td><td style='text-align: left;'>a b</td></tr><tr><td style='text-align: left;'><code>&lambda;</code></td><td style='text-align: left;'>λ</td></tr><tr><td style='text-align: left;'><code>&mdash;</code></td><td style='text-align: left;'>—</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h2 id='future'><span class='maruku_section_number'>8. </span>Future developments</h2>
<p>I think that <a href='http://sophos.berkeley.edu/macfarlane/pandoc/'>Pandoc</a> and <a href='http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/MultiMarkdown'>MultiMarkdown</a> are very cool projects. However, they are written in Haskell and Perl, respectively. I would love to have an equivalent in Ruby.</p>
<h3 id='a_syntax_for_adding_math'><span class='maruku_section_number'>8.1. </span>A syntax for adding math</h3>
<p>Something inspired from LaTeX should be familiar to all:</p>
<pre><code>This is inline math: $\alpha$
This is an equation with label:
$ \alpha = \beta + \gamma $ (eq:1)
This is a reference to equation: please see (eq:1)</code></pre><div class='footnotes'><hr /><ol><li id='fn:1'>
<p>I really was missing those.</p>
<a href='#fnref:1' rev='footnote'>↩</a></li></ol></div><div class='maruku_signature'><hr /><span style='font-size: small; font-style: italic'>Created by <a href='http://maruku.rubyforge.org' title='Maruku: a Markdown interpreter for Ruby'>Maruku</a> at 23:50 on Monday, January 08th, 2007.</span></div></body></html>