Parsing is all about syntactic analysis, a parser may well just return true and
false depending on whether the input is syntactically correct or not.
I’m not very comfortable about calling them libraries if they are actually
executables or scripts. They are either one of them but not both. Like you
pointed out, a _Markdown_ library consists of a parser and one or more
formatters (bare in mind that formatters are responsible for
transforming/translating something from internal memory, an instance, into a
format that can be physically stored on external memory, hdd, and later
retrieved (e.g.: formatting an instance to XML and later reconstructing the
instance from that same XML, just like one would save a word document to a
.docx file and later “opening” it to continue writing the same document)).
Eventually the library will allow the user to write his own formatters (e.g.:
your library has a html formatter but I want to save as pdf, I need a way to
extend your library in my application to write my own pdf formatter without
writing the parser all over again).
Now the application/script that gets shipped with the library to make use of it
from the command line is something apart from the library itself like you
pointed out. How will this application/script be called since it can’t be
parser or formatter? It does both things in a very specific order. I’m still
willing to call it a translator because it takes file A and translates it to
file B under a different format. The shipped application/script is nothing more
than an _application_ to the Markdown library and if it’s open sourced it can
serve as a tutorial for “here’s how you use this library”.
A library must primarily expose an interface and one or more dlls that can be
referenced and consumed. If it’s just an exe that does all the work then I’m
hesitant to calling it a library. I know that CLI Assemblies are either .dll or
.exe and both can act as libraries but the primary intent of an .exe is to be
executed and maybe referenced not the other way around.
Andrei Fangli
From: Waylan Limberg
Sent: Sunday, 7 September 2014 17:06
To: markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.net
Actually, on rereading my previous response, a realized that I also referred to
it as a "library" (see http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing))
which most (all?) markdown parsers are. So a "markdown editor" (a GUI app like
MarkdownPad) would make calls to a "markdown library" to covert the markdown
text typed by the user to HTML.
Strictly speaking, a library would generally consist of a "parser" and a
"formatter". The parser parses the text ( identifies the different parts) and a
formatter coverts those parts (the parse tree) into the final format. Therefore
some libraries (like Pandoc) have multiple formatters, whereas others (most)
only have one. Given the lack of choice of formatters, most people forget about
the formatter part of the process. Thus the common nomenclature used is often
"parser".
To add additional confusion most libraries also ship with a command line script
which wraps the underlying library. That script usually defaults to parsing
Markdown text and outputting HTML. So most people (perhaps incorrectly) think
of that wrapping script as the final product and refer to the whole thing as
the "parser".
So I would say that "library" is probably the technically correct term, but the
generally accepted (and most widely understood) term is "parser".
Waylan Limberg
On Sep 7, 2014, at 9:39 AM, Waylan Limberg <waylan.limb...@icloud.com> wrote:
I would have to agree with Andrei mostly. Those of us that have implemented
markdown libraries generally refer to them as implementations of a **parser**.
"Processor" or "translator" are not words I've ever seen used.
Waylan Limberg
On Sep 7, 2014, at 3:50 AM, Andrei Fangli <andrei_fan...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think not. When I hear Markdown processor I think of a specialized word/text
processor (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor) which is more an
application that helps you write stuff and print it, eventually export it to
html. If you were to write an application that helps you write documents (e.g.:
insert list, quote etc. via buttons/commands) and use Markdown as the
underlying format would be a Markdown processor. If you would write an
application that translates a Markdown document to html, that would be a
Markdown translator and the whole process would be called translation (or
Markdown to Html Translation). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation.
For me, Markdown implementation sounds a bit odd. Markdown is not standardized
nor is its specification clear enough to draw a deterministic procedure for
translating Markdown into html (or an Abstract Syntax Tree). You cannot say
that there are multiple Markdown implementations if they do not yield the same
output for any given input (if you would then I could swap implementations
however I wish and get the same result).
I’d simply name the specification (or flavour) and append “Translator” at the
end (e.g.: Github flavoured Markdown Translator, Common Markdown Translator
etc.). That way it’s all clear what specification is used and what the intent
of the application is. The real working horse behind a translator is a parser,
once you have that you can pretty much do anything else. Saying that you have a
Markdown parser is almost the same as saying that you have a Markdown
translator, the remaining effort is close to a days work if you want to make it
really fancy.
Andrei Fangli
From: Sean Leonard
Sent: Sunday, 7 September 2014 02:55
To: markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.net
Hello Markdown World,
Last month draft-seantek-text-markdown-media-type was adopted by the
IETF Apps Area Working Group (APPSAWG). I am working on revising it.
I am trying to use uniform terms. An implementation that converts
Markdown content to another format--most typically HTML--is called...a
Markdown processor, right?
I have been using the term "Markdown processor". Just want to see if
there is substantial disagreement about using that term to refer to the
collective set of Markdown implementations out there.
Thanks,
Sean
PS I suppose it could also be called a "Markdown implementation". But
I'm going to stick to my original nomenclature in the absence of a push
for something else. For instance, graphical tools such as [MarkdownPad]
may be implementations of Markdown, but they are not processors.
MarkdownPad is a Markdown editor, that has built-in support for various
Markdown processors (such as a GitHub Flavored Markdown processor, and a
Markdown Extra processor).
[MarkdownPad]: http://markdownpad.com/
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