mateuszkubuszok / flexmark-scala

Scala.md

Scala.md is a rewrite of flexmark-java into Scala, while flexmark-java is a Java implementation of CommonMark (spec 0.28) parser using the blocks first, inlines after Markdown parsing architecture which boasts:

Its strengths are speed, flexibility, Markdown source element based AST with details of the source position down to individual characters of lexemes that make up the element and extensibility.

The API allows granular control of the parsing process and is optimized for parsing with a large number of installed extensions. The parser and extensions come with plenty of options for parser behavior and HTML rendering variations. The end goal is to have the parser and renderer be able to mimic other parsers with great degree of accuracy. This is now partially complete with the implementation of Markdown Processor Emulation

Motivation for this project was the need to replace pegdown parser in my Markdown Navigator plugin for JetBrains IDEs. pegdown has a great feature set but its speed in general is less than ideal and for pathological input either hangs or practically hangs during parsing.

Scala.md was created because:

• I needed slightly more Scala-idiomatic API - that could have been addressed with a wrapper, though
• I needed the code to be cross-compiled between Scala and Scala Native - I want to be able to develop static-site generator for Markdown using Scala CLI - users would be able to customize its behavior in Scala CLI AND run their modifications as a Native app - this would be possible with GraalVM... but native-image build takes A LOT of time and resources, so it doesn't have a nice feedback loop
• I thought it would be fun, and you cannot take that away from me

Progress and scope

Scala.md is not intended to be as fast as flexmark-java - as long as I would be able to build sited noticeable faster than with jekyll I'd be pretty happy. It will not be as modular, nor implement all the modules that flexmark did (e.g. it doesn't provide: DOCX-rendering or PDF-rendering).

License

Copyright (c) 2015-2016 Atlassian and others.

Copyright (c) 2016-2023, Vladimir Schneider,

BSD (2-clause) licensed, see LICENSE.txt file.