marklink 1.1.0

Create markdown links from text containing URLs

marklink

marklink replaces URLs found in text with a markup hyperlink with the contents of the <title> tag in the HTML of the URL. It works like a typical Unix filter:

echo "I like https://github.com?something=what" | marklink --format md --remove-query

I like [GitHub: Where the world builds software · GitHub](https://github.com)

Its goal is to increase the ergonomics of writing, thus leading you to write more. You get to experience the joy of having robots helping you while writing.

Inspired by Titler by Brett Terpstra for Mac OS and org-cliplink for Emacs.

The ultimate goal of this project is to be cross platform and support many formats, workflows and editors.

Installation

With pip:

pip install --user git+https://github.com/staticaland/marklink.git#egg=marklink

With pipx:

pipx install 'git+https://github.com/staticaland/marklink.git#egg=marklink'

Editor integration

Vim

nnoremap <leader>l :%!marklink<CR>
vnoremap <leader>l :!marklink<CR>

This is reminiscent of the Vim Kōan Master Wq and the Markdown acolyte.

Emacs

I use reformatter.el (see my reformatter.el config here).

You can also use some variant of shell-command-on-region:

(defun marklink-org ()
  (interactive *)
  (save-excursion
    (shell-command-on-region (mark) (point) "marklink --format org" (buffer-name) t)))

You may have to set the following if you like an exotic $SHELL:

(setq explicit-shell-file-name "/bin/bash")
(setq shell-file-name explicit-shell-file-name)

Atom, Sublime Text, VS Code et al.

Pull requests most welcome.

You may want to consider Paste URL at the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Usage

usage: marklink [-h] [-f {md,org,html}] [-q] [files]

Args that start with '--' (eg. -f) can also be set in a config file
(~/.marklink). Config file syntax allows: key=value, flag=true, stuff=[a,b,c]
(for details, see syntax at https://goo.gl/R74nmi). If an arg is specified in
more than one place, then commandline values override config file values which
override defaults.

positional arguments:
  files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -f {md,org,html}, --format {md,org,html}
                        which format
  -q, --remove-query    remove query parameters

Other alternatives

Use a bookmarklet (source):

javascript:(
    function(){
        prompt(
            '',
            '[['
                +location.href
                +']['
                +document.title.replace(/ [-,|].*$/,'')
                +']]'
        )
    }
)()

Some useful links:

Using external filter commands to reformat HTML

Formatting text with par

GitHub - ferrine/md-img-paste.vim: paste image to markdown

Vim Tip: Paste Markdown Link with Automatic Title Fetching | Ben Congdon

GitHub - alphapapa/org-web-tools: View, capture, and archive Web pages in Org-mode

Plans

Add to Python Package Index.

Make it faster. Do concurrent HTTP requests somehow.

Ignore files such as images.

Rewrite to golang to avoid dependencies for end users.

Set another user agent.

Change the name.

org-mode gif.