Lunamark is a command-line program for conversion of markdown to other textual formats. Currently HTML, [dzslides] (HTML5 slides), Docbook, ConTeXt, LaTeX, and Groff man are the supported output formats, but it is easy to add new writers or modify existing ones. The markdown parser is written using a PEG grammar and can also be modified by the user.

This is a "standalone" version of lunamark. (See also the lua library version.) It is written in ANSI C and lua, and compiles to an executable with no external dependencies. It is as portable as lua and has very good performance. It is about the same speed as the author's own C library peg-markdown, an order of magnitude faster than pandoc, two orders of magnitude faster than Markdown.pl, and three orders of magnitude faster than markdown.lua.

Lunamark's markdown parser currently supports a number of extensions (which can be turned on or off individually), including:

• Smart typography (fancy quotes, dashes, ellipses)
• Significant start numbers in ordered lists
• Footnotes
• Definition lists
• Pandoc-style title blocks
• Flexible metadata using lua declarations

See the lunamark man page for a complete list.

It is very easy to extend the library by modifying the writers, adding new writers, and even modifying the markdown parser. Some simple examples are given in the [API documentation].

Benchmarks (converting a 1M test file consisting of 25 copies of the markdown test suite concatenated together):

     0.03s   sundown
     0.13s   redcarpet
     0.14s   discount
 ->  0.35s   lunamark + luajit
     0.50s   peg-markdown
 ->  0.63s   lunamark + lua
     2.79s   PHP Markdown
     4.74s   RedCloth
     4.97s   pandoc
    56.75s   Markdown.pl
   996.14s   markdown.lua

Benchmarks on a 42K file (where startup time becomes significant):

    0.008s   sundown
    0.011s   discount
->  0.030s   lunamark + luajit
    0.037s   peg-markdown
->  0.046s   lunamark + lua
    0.111s   redcarpet
    0.292s   pandoc
    0.294s   Markdown.pl
    0.402s   RedCloth
    0.961s   markdown.lua

On a linux, mac osx, or freebsd system, just Get the source and type 'make'.

git clone http://github.com/jgm/lunamark-standalone.git
cd lunamark-standalone
make

This should produce an executable lunamark and a man page lunamark.1. You should copy these to appropriate locations.

The source directory contains a large test suite in tests. This includes existing Markdown and PHP Markdown tests, plus more tests for lunamark-specific features and additional corner cases.

To run the tests, use scripts/shtest.

scripts/shtest --help            # get usage
scripts/shtest                   # run all tests
scripts/shtest indent            # run all tests matching "indent"
scripts/shtest -p Markdown.pl -t # run all tests using Markdown.pl, and normalize using 'tidy'

Lunamark currently fails four of the PHP Markdown tests:

• tests/PHP_Markdown/Quotes in attributes.test: The HTML is semantically equivalent; using the -t/--tidy option to bin/shtest makes the test pass.

• tests/PHP_Markdown/Email auto links.test: The HTML is semantically equivalent. PHP markdown does entity obfuscation, and lunamark does not. This feature could be added easily enough, but the test would still fail, because the obfuscation involves randomness. Again, using the -t/--tidy option makes the test pass.

• tests/PHP_Markdown/Ins & del.test: PHP markdown puts extra <p> tags around <ins>hello</ins>, while lunamark does not. It's hard to tell from the markdown spec which behavior is correct.

• tests/PHP_Markdown/Emphasis.test: A bunch of corner cases with nested strong and emphasized text. These corner cases are left undecided by the markdown spec, so in my view the PHP test suite is not normative here; I think lunamark's behavior is perfectly reasonable, and I see no reason to change.

lunamark is released under the MIT license.

Most of the library is written by John MacFarlane. Hans Hagen made some major performance improvements. Khaled Hosny added the original ConTeXt writer.

The [dzslides] HTML, CSS, and javascript code is by Paul Rouget, released under the DWTFYWT Public License.