mdc - markdown translator

mdc is a Markdown to HTML translator written in gawk. The output files are

• static - if the file is opened from disk it 'just works', and
• complete - it contains some minimal CSS definitions for modern graphical browser.

If you like or need it, you can optionally add a stylesheet or javascript file, but these are really just add-ons.

Documentation

mdc supports only very basic markup, because I wanted to be able to read the markup source in plain-text. While I was working on mdc I read the basic and extended Markdown information and also about GitHub's own Markdown flavor.

This is mdc's documentation:

• Supported markup lists the supported markup.
• Meta information shows how to work with multiple files and how to integrate CSS and Javascript.
• Using mdc explains mdc's command line.
• There's a simple CGI script wrapping around mdc to edit files via HTTP.

Downloads

The current version is 1.0.10. Get

• the debian archive: mdc_1.0.10-1_all.deb or
• the tar archive: mdc-1.0.10.tar.gz.

You might want to adapt the script mde to your needs.

• update-html is a shell script that lists all .md files, which need to be retranslated because their .html is older or does not exist.

Why mdc?

I started thinking about Markdown when I was about to create a Github account. Markdown is their chosen markup language for HTML pages and their Markdown dialect is full of extensions to support e.g. coloring source code of very different languages.

I work a lot on the Linux command line and Markdown fits very well because the markup is easily readable and editable, while I can get HTML from it too. I decided to write mdc (instead of using one of the many available Markdown translators) to keep readable plain-text in scope (instead of HTML features). For instance, I made changes like

• table identifiers | may be indented with blanks,
• code blocks ``` may be indented and the first line's amount of white-space indentation is removed from all lines.

to make the plain-text markup better readable.