markdownish

Rust library to render Markdown-ish input into a Signal-friendly plain text message and text style ranges suitable for use with signal-cli.

• Spec: see spec.md for rules and future implementation details
• Status: baseline working — headings + inline styles (bold/italic/strikethrough/monospace)
• Parser: markdown-it
• Python: optional pyo3 bindings behind python feature

Quick Start (Rust)

• Call render(&str) -> Rendered to get:
  • Rendered.text: String — final message text (headings converted to hN ...).
  • Rendered.styles: Vec<TextStyle> — style spans with UTF‑16 offsets.
  • Encode spans for transport if needed with encode_text_styles(&rendered.styles) → ["<start>:<len>:<KIND>", ...] (format usable with signal-cli).

Example

use markdownish::{render, Style, TextStyle, encode_text_styles};

let rendered = render("# **Hello** _world_\n\nHello **bold** and *it*.");
// rendered.text => "h1 Hello world\n\nHello bold and it."
// rendered.styles => spans for bold/italic in the paragraph (none inside headings)

let encoded = encode_text_styles(&rendered.styles);
println!("{}", rendered.text);
println!("{:?}", encoded);

What gets translated (high level)

• Headings: ATX/Setext → hN <raw text> plus a blank line after. Inline styles inside headings are not emitted.
• Bold/Italic: **text**/__text__, *text*/_text_ → spans over the inner text.
• Paragraphs/Breaks: paragraphs separated by a blank line; soft/hard breaks → \n.
• Newlines: input CR/CRLF normalized to \n.

Features

• python: enables optional Python bindings via pyo3 (module scaffolding pending). Build with:
  • cargo build --features python
  • Or install the Python extension via maturin:
    • pip install maturin (once)
    • maturin develop -F python (installs markdownish into your current venv)

Python usage

After maturin develop -F python, try:

• python scripts/render.py "# **Hello** _world_ and **b** *i*"
  • Outputs JSON with text and textStyles (array of "<start>:<len>:<KIND>").
• python scripts/repl.py
  • Interactive: type lines, then :go to render current buffer.

Python API (high level):

• import markdownish; markdownish.render(text: str) -> dict with keys:
  • text: str — final message string
  • textStyles: list[str] — array of "<start>:<len>:<KIND>"

Docs

• Generate Rust docs: cargo doc --open