stragu / chtml Goto Github PK

An attempt to make HTML easier to write in simple text editors using brackets. The name comes from the Catalan numbers, as the design is based around brackets.

Instead of

<div>
    <p class="silly">Hello, World!</p>
</div>

users should only have to type something like

(div
  (p class: silly; Hello, World!)
)

Or, for the power user, something like (div [p class:silly; Hello, World!]) (i.e. using interchangeable (.)s and [.]s).

The program will be a Python script that will output .html files, just like Markdown. The inverse should be possible too: any .html should be easily translated to .chtml (or perhaps .cht for short) for working.

The general form will be something like <a href="x">link</a> → (a href: x; link). A possible alternate canonical form would be something like a(href: x; link), so the scope of the element is very clear. This would yield

div(
   p(class: silly; Hello, World!)
)

• A problem with this is if there are elements that are not part of the normal namespace, the parser will freak out.
• A problem might also be that special characters cause the compiler to end the group (as they're called in regexes) prematurely.
• Another possible problem is that the class might be a little unclear. For instance, <p class="silly, fancy">text</p> → (p class: silly, fancy; text) renders it a little less clear, as there is no delimiter between the list of classes and the actual contents. Perhaps this is mitigated by enclosing the text in quotation marks, e.g. (p class: silly, fancy; 'text'), or more experimental solutions such as (p class: silly, fancy; | text) which is quite pleasing to the eye, though might yield other problems with keyboards other than US qwerty.

• flag to dot .cht files when compiling .html files