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diff --git a/misc/document-formats.md b/misc/document-formats.md deleted file mode 100644 index 9ee21acc..00000000 --- a/misc/document-formats.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,83 +0,0 @@ -# Document formats - -Most of the time, when writing a document, I want a document format with the following properties: - -* Fast to write using a plain text editor -* Easy to parse into an AST - -An AST is a programming-friendly representation of a document. -ASTs reduce the effort required to write tools such as a program that validates links in a document. -Ideally, ASTs contain information to track a document element to the position it occupies in the original document. -With this information, if you write a tool such as a spell checker, then you can highlight misspelled works precisely in the original document. - -On top of that, some features that I don't always need: - -* Math support -* Sophisticated code blocks. - For example, being able to highlight arbitrary parts of code blocks (not syntax highlighting). -* Diagram support - -## Existing formats - -### Markdown - -* Easy to write using a plain text editor -* Has good AST parsers with position information -* Has math support -* Does not support sophisticated code blocks -* There are many extensions with support for math, diagrams, and many others -* Is very popular and supported everywhere -* However, there is a wide variety of variants and quirks -* Especifically, because Markdown was not designed with parsing in mind, so tools based on different parsers can have differences in behavior - -### [Djot](https://djot.net/) - -It is very similar to Markdown, except: - -* It is designed for parsing, so independent parsing implementations are very compatible with each other -* It is not so popular, so there are less extension and tool support - -### [AsciiDoc](https://asciidoc.org/) - -Compared to Markdown: - -* It's more complex to write, but mostly because it's different and more powerful -* There are attempts to write better parsers, but good parsers with position information are not available yet -* Supports sophisticated code blocks -* It has a smaller ecosystem than Markdown, but many good quality tools such as Antora - -### [Typst](https://typst.app/) - -Checks all my boxes, except: - -* It is designed for parsing and it has an AST, but it is not easy to access -* Currently Typst is very oriented towards generating paged documents (e.g. PDF) -* It includes a full programming language, which is mostly good (very extensible), but this might increase complexity undesirably - -Typst is very new and is not yet very popular. - -[Typesetter](https://codeberg.org/haydn/typesetter) is a desktop application that embeds Typst, so no additional setup is needed. -However, Typesetter is only available as a Flatpak. - -### [Verso](https://github.com/leanprover/verso) - -A Markdown-like closely tied to [the Lean programming language](https://lean-lang.org/): - -* Eliminates ambiguous syntax for easier parsing and is stricter (not all text is valid Verso) -* Has a (Lean) data model -* Designed for extensibility - -### TODO: other formats - -- https://github.com/nota-lang/nota -- https://github.com/christianvoigt/argdown -- https://github.com/nvim-neorg -- https://github.com/podlite/podlite/ -- https://orgmode.org/ -- https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile - -## Creating your own formats - -https://github.com/spc476/MOPML someone created its own lightweight format using Lua and PEGs. - -https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2020/which_parsing_approach.html has information about choosing parsing approaches. |