Adding additional output formats for Markdown?

[Fletcher T. Penney]

Like many others, I have found markdown to be useful tool.  I agree  
with the core principle of having the markup look like plain human  
readable text as much as possible.  This is my main reason for  
wanting to stick with Markdown as opposed to other markup formats.

However, I would like to use it for more than just web pages.

In digging around, I have seen references to markdown/LaTeX tools,  
but couldn't actually find any to download.  As I set about to write  
my own, it occurred to me that I was thinking too small.

Don't get me wrong, the default markdown to html utility (perl or  
python) is great, but I would like to be able to easily create  
different output formats, without having to learn/remember different  
markup languages.

Personally, I would like to have LaTex and XHTML outputs, but I can  
imagine wanting more formats down the road (OPML, S5, etc).

Rather than having to reinvent the wheel each time, it seems that it  
would be handy to have a core markdown parser that reads the plain  
text and identifies the chunks that need to be handled.  Once it has  
parsed out, for example, the individual items in a list, these are  
passed to an export format plugin that handles the output (e.g.  
export the list as HTML, or LaTex, or whatever), one piece at a time.

There would continue to be a single Markdown syntax, but there could  
be multiple ways of expressing the output based on individual needs.

This would be useful in allowing automatic creation of pdf's from  
your weblog posts, for example, or using Markdown to write academic  
papers that are converted into LaTex, or whatever.

Is there anyone else who things that such a utility would be useful?   
Does anyone have something similar already? (I hate reinventing the  
wheel, as noted above...)   Any thoughts about how it should work?


Thanks,

Fletcher


-- 
Fletcher T. Penney
fletcher at alumni.duke.edu

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