DEV Community

Cover image for πŸ“œ I wrote a lightweight markup language (unhappy with markdown)
Touch Marine
Touch Marine

Posted on

πŸ“œ I wrote a lightweight markup language (unhappy with markdown)

Try It Online

http://touchlabs.io/play

Open Source on GitHub

https://github.com/touchmarine/to (MIT License)

My Problems With Markdown

I write tons of documentation for my projects and in the past I used mostly markdown. It was ok most of the time but quickly got painful for some even very basic things.

Want to change the image size? Sorry, you will have to use something else.
Want to add a simple comment? Better luck next time.
Want to add a simple attribute? No go.

Solution - Touch

To solve my problems and pain points I made Touch and I want to share it with you.

Touch has syntax similar to markdown so it's familiar and easy to use. It comes with comments and attributes by default. It also comes with other basic elements: numbered headings, notes, description lists, subtitles, and captions.

Configurable & Extendable

Touch comes with a rich set of common elements that work everywhere (unlike some markdown elements that work only in some flavors). But maybe your team needs extra elements and you don't want to switch to yet another less readable language?

Touch is also configurable & extendable via JSON. You can add new elements or configure templates with a simple JSON file!

Auto-Formattable

And then there's my favorite feature: auto-formatting. It's just like prettier for JS or gofmt for Go. You can auto-format Touch source code so you and your teammates can easily share documents.

Thoughts

What do you think? Are you also unhappy with markdown sometimes? Would Touch be useful to you?

Top comments (3)

Collapse
 
negreanucalin profile image
Negreanu Calin

Preety neat, good one!

Collapse
 
hallison profile image
Hallison Batista

Awesome. Do know the Txt2Tags? It is another great (and old) markup language written in Python.

Collapse
 
touch_marine profile image
Touch Marine

I researched a ton of markup langs but haven't come across txt2tags yet. It's pretty neat and another great resource to learn from. Added (locally) to my list of resources (github.com/touchmarine/to/blob/v1....).