NAME¶

lowdown — simple markdown translator

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

Translate from lowdown(5) into diverse output formats. Results are written to standard output.

The arguments are as follows:

-s

Standalone mode. This emits a document envelope surrounding the output by drawing from document metadata. See Metadata on providing information to the document envelope. This only applies to -Tgemini, -Thtml, -Tlatex, -Tms, and -Tman.

-M metadata

Provide a single metadata key-value pair. This may be in the usual lowdown(5) colon-separated metadata format or instead separated by an equal sign, depending upon which character comes first. Exits with an error if given neither colon nor equal sign. May be invoked multiple times for each pair. This overrides -m and what's parsed from the document.

-m metadata

Like -M, but is overridden by what's parsed the document, then -M.

-o file

Send output to file unless it's “-”, in which case fall back to the default of standard output.

-T mode

The output mode. This may be html for HTML5 output, latex for LaTeX, gemini for the Gemini format, ms for roff output using the classic (i.e., no-extension) -ms package and needing table support, term for ANSI-compatible UTF-8 terminal output, man for roff output using the classic -man package, tree, to show the parse tree of the input document, and null to parse the document but do no rendering. See Output modes.

-X keyword

Instead of outputting the full translated file, extract only the given metadata keyword and exit. These will be escaped according to the output mode -T; for example, a title of “<foo>” with -Thtml will be extracted as “&lt;foo&gt;”. Metadata is not rendered for -Ttree or -Tnull.

file

Input Markdown document. If not given or if file is “-”, read from standard input.

The following are options for input parsing. These affect the parse tree passed to all outputs.

--parse-hilite

Enable highlight span support. This are disabled by default because it may be erroneously interpreted as section headers.

--parse-math

Recognise mathematics equations.

--parse-maxdepth=depth

The maximum depth of nested elements. This defaults to 128, which is probably more than enough for any real-world document. If the maximum is hit, the system exits as if memory were exhausted. Set to zero for no maximum.

--parse-no-autolink

Do not parse http, https, ftp, mailto, and relative links or link fragments.

--parse-no-cmark

Do not parse with CommonMark constraints. This also disables using the first ordered list value instead of starting all lists at one.

--parse-no-codeindent

Do not parse indented content as code blocks.

--parse-no-deflists

Do not parse PHP extra definition lists.

--parse-no-fenced

Do not parse GFM fenced (language-specific) code blocks.

--parse-no-footnotes

Do not parse MMD footnotes.

--parse-no-img-ext

Do not parse PHP extra image extended attributes.

--parse-no-intraemph

Do not parse emphasis within words and links.

--parse-no-metadata

Do not parse MMD metadata. For the first paragraph to count as metadata, the first line must have a colon in it. This does not affect metadata given on -m or -M.

--parse-no-strike

Do not parse strikethroughs.

--parse-no-super

Do not parse super-scripts.

--parse-no-tables

Do not parse GFM tables.

There are many output options. The following are shared by all output modes:

--out-standalone

Alias for -s.

--out-no-smarty

Do not use the smart typography filter. By default, certain character sequences are translated into output-specific glyphs.

What follows are per-output options. For HTML with -Thtml, these are as follows:

--html-hardwrap

Hard-wrap paragraph content by outputting line breaks where applicable.

--html-no-escapehtml

If --html-no-skiphtml has been specified, this causes embedded HTML not to be escaped, and is instead output verbatim. This has no effect if --html-no-skiphtml has not been specified.

--html-no-head-ids

Do not output id attributes for headers.

--html-no-num-ent

Don't normalise HTML entities (when possible) as numeric ones and instead use the entities as given on input.

--html-no-owasp

Don't follow the OWASP recommendations for escaping text, and do only the minimal escaping to make sure that regular content isn't interpreted as HTML.

--html-no-skiphtml

Output embedded HTML. By default, embedded HTML is not output at all. See --html-no-escapehtml.

For both -Tman and -Tms, the following apply:

--nroff-no-groff

Don't use groff(1) style section headings, PDF hyperlinks (this further requires -mspdf passed to groff(1)), or Unicode sequence syntax. The output is compatible with traditional troff(1). Applies to -Tman and -Tms.

--nroff-no-numbered

Don't output numbered headings. Only applies to -Tms.

--nroff-no-skiphtml

Output embedded HTML. This usually doesn't make sense because the HTML won't be interpreted by the output reader. By default, HTML is omitted.

--nroff-nolinks

Don't show URLs for images and links (autolinks are still shown). (Link content is still shown.) Overrides --nroff-shortlinks for images and links. Applies to -Tman or when -nroff-no-groff is specified.

--nroff-shortlinks

Shorten URLs for images, links, and autolinks to only the domain name and final path. Applies to -Tman or when -nroff-no-groff is specified.

The -Tterm output has the following:

--term-columns=columns

The number of columns in the screen. Useful for when running in a pipe. Defaults to what the terminal reports or 72 if in a pipe.

--term-hmargin=margin

The number of left margin spaces. Truncated to the number of columns. Defaults to zero.

--term-nolinks

Don't show URLs for images and links (autolinks are still shown). (Link content is still shown.) Overrides --term-shortlinks for images and links.

--term-shortlinks

Shorten URLs for images, links, and autolinks to only the domain name and final path.

--term-vmargin=margin

The number of top and bottom margin newlines. Defaults to zero.

--term-width=width

Set the soft limit on the number of characters per line. This may be exceeded by literal text. The default (or if zero) is the number of terminal columns or 80 at most.

The -Tgemini output has several flags that control the placement of links. By default, links (images, autolinks, and links) are queued when specified in-line then emitted in a block sequence after the nearest block element.

--gemini-link-end

Emit the queue of links at the end of the document instead of after the nearest block element.

--gemini-link-inline

Render all links within the flow of text. This will cause breakage when nested links, such as images within links, links in blockquotes, etc. It should not be used unless in carefully crafted documents.

--gemini-link-noref

Do not format link labels. Takes precedence over --gemini-link-roman.

--gemini-link-roman

When formatting link labels, use lower-case Roman numerals instead of the default lower-case hexavigesimal (i.e., “a”, “b”, ..., “aa”, “ab”, ...).

--gemini-metadata

Print metadata as the canonicalised key followed by a colon then the value, each on one line (newlines replaced by spaces). The metadata block is terminated by a double newline. If there is no metadata, this does nothing.

The -Tlatex output has the following options:

--latex-no-numbered

Don't number sections (and subsections, etc.).

--latex-no-skiphtml

Output embedded HTML. This usually doesn't make sense because the HTML won't be interpreted by the output reader. By default, HTML is omitted.

EXIT STATUS¶

The lowdown utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

If the -X flag is used, lowdown exits with an error if the given keyword is not found.

EXAMPLES¶

To view a Markdown file on an ANSI-compatible, UTF-8 terminal:

The terminal may also be used with groff(1) or mandoc(1) rendering:

lowdown -sTms foo.md | groff -itk -mspdf -Tutf8 | less -R
lowdown -sTman foo.md | groff -itk -man -Tutf8 | less -R
lowdown -sTman foo.md | mandoc | less

To emit a standalone HTML5 document:

To use groff(1) or mandoc(1) to format as a PS file:

lowdown -sTms foo.md | groff -itk -mspdf > foo.ps
lowdown -sTman foo.md | mandoc -Tps > foo.ps

Or with LaTeX:

lowdown -sTlatex foo.md > foo.latex
pslatex foo.latex

PDF generation follows similar logic:

lowdown -sTms foo.md | pdfroff -itk -mspdf > foo.pdf
lowdown -sTman foo.md | mandoc -Tpdf > foo.pdf
lowdown -sTlatex foo.md > foo.latex
pdflatex foo.latex

UTF-8 support for groff(1) PDF or PS output requires appropriate fonts, such as the Unicode Times font. This and other Unicode fonts are not always installed by default. They may be found, for PDF output, in the devpdf set of the groff(1) font directory and are prefixed with ‘U’.

lowdown -sTms foo.md | pdfroff -itk -mspdf -FU-T > foo.pdf

To extract the HTML-escaped title from a file's metadata:

SEE ALSO¶

lowdown-diff(1), lowdown(3), lowdown(5)

AUTHORS¶

lowdown was forked from hoedown by Kristaps Dzonsons, kristaps@bsd.lv. It has been considerably modified since.