MultiMarkdown 2.0.a Released

[Fletcher T. Penney]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 7:06 AM, Michael Sheets wrote:


>> Check out the MultiMarkdown page for more information.  And if you  

>> use TextMate, I **highly** recommend you try out the new bundle  

>> and theme.  I believe it will make it much easier to create  

>> MultiMarkdown documents, as well as to process them into other  

>> formats with minimal effort.

>

> Is there any reason you've forked the entire Markdown bundle? The  

> old version of the Markdown grammar you used is especially  

> troubling as you've missed a ton of improvements we've made over  

> the past month or so. Great strides have been made in the area of  

> bold/italics, nested handling, block level content and such.


The order of some of the rules has to be customized to work with  
MultiMarkdown, and I don't *think* it's possible to just reference  
the base Markdown bundle.  Instead it has to be copied over.   As for  
the changes, you were probably working on those improvements as I was  
working on this bundle, so the changes weren't there when I started  
and I wasn't aware that a new version was released.  I'll look into  
it, as there are certainly improvements needed in the base markdown  
rules.

Where is the new version of the base Markdown bundle available?


> While forking the grammar itself was necessary, to support some of  

> the new items in MultiMarkdown, splitting off all of the commands  

> and snippets seems a touch extreme. With scopes we can customize  

> commands to fire off differently based on the root scope when needed.


For the initial release, it was easier to copy over the commands that  
are needed.  There are a few reasons that I think it's easier to turn  
off the base Markdown module, and therefore replicated the command  
that are useful with MultiMarkdown.  In reality, though, does it make  
any difference if a few of the commands are replicated in both  
modules as long as they work in the same manner?


> Also, the new bundle items use overly-broad scopes. Several end up  

> firing in regular Markdown mode and some (e.g. the Latex commands)  

> don't have any scope at all, meaning they are active in every  

> language.


This can be fixed easily.  I only use TextMate for testing this  
bundle, and therefore only with MultiMarkdown and LaTeX documents, so  
just hadn't noticed this issue.  The next release will have narrower  
scopes.


> Finally, the key bindings in the new MultiMarkdown bundle are in  

> conflict with several conventions we use for bundle commands.  

> "Increase Quote Level" for instance is ⌘' the commands for  

> 'process' use  ⌘R and 'preview' is always ⌃⌥⌘P. The Latex  

> related commands conflict with the "Toggle Line Numbers" command.


These commands are not available in the Markdown Bundle I have -  
again, where is the newest release for the bundle - it does not  
appear to have been included in the latest version of TextMate.


> I hope I don't sound too negative here, but I don't see the  

> benefits in forking the bundle, and it negatively impacts the  

> existing bundle.


Again - there are some incompatibilities between the original syntax  
and the requirements of MultiMarkdown.  You are welcome to see if  
things can be rewritten to be compatible, but I don't believe they  
are at this point.    That is why I had to copy the grammar over and  
make a few changes.


> There is no reason they can't coexist if we are careful.  

> Additionally, by keeping the MultiMarkdown grammar integrated with  

> the official bundle, we can keep it in sync with the Markdown  

> grammar, and everyone can improve it.


If possible, this would be great, but I am not sure if it is possible.


> If you drop by ##textmate on irc://chat.freenote.net sometime,  

> we'll see if we can't help you merge what you've done into the  

> official Markdown bundle.


I'm happy to correspond by email, but I'm not a big irc user.  With  
my work schedule, email is a lot more reliable for me.


> Until this is fixed up, however, I can't recommend that TextMate  

> users install it because of the conflicts with Markdown and  

> TextMate itself.


Well I think it depends on whether you use MultiMarkdown or regular  
Markdown.  Some people might find some of my features a compelling  
reason to switch - specifically some of the automated formatting for  
lists, headers, etc.  But if you use a newer version of  
MultiMarkdown, I think the switch is a requirement.  As the author of  
MultiMarkdown, I couldn't get my documents to properly compile using  
the MultiMarkdown support in the vanilla Markdown bundle.  That  
prompted me to start a new bundle, and then I decided to improve on  
it using TextMate's commands and completions.

Most importantly, this is why users have a choice - they are welcome  
to pick whichever version offers the features and ease of use they  
desire.  But I agree that it may be possible to take the best of each  
bundle and create a single version.

But from my perspective, if you want to use MultiMarkdown,  
particularly version 2.0.a, it's a no brainer.  Go with the  
MultiMarkdown bundle.  There are a lot of features that don't exist  
anywhere else (autocompletion of anchor, image, BibTeX citations,  
etc; automatic formatting of lists, tables, header data, etc; and  
lots more)

You are certainly welcome to copy my changes back to the original  
Bundle if a single common language grammar is possible, and I am also  
happy to look at your new changes to the vanilla bundle and update my  
version if you point me towards a newer copy.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions, and I will incorporate  
as much as possible into the next release.


Fletcher

PS>  If anyone wants to discuss this further, we could certainly take  
it off list.

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

I have two very rare photographs. One is a picture of Houdini
locking his keys in his car. The other is a rare photograph of
Norman Rockwell beating up a child.
         - Steven Wright


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