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authorJohn MacFarlane <jgm@berkeley.edu>2015-04-16 12:55:05 -0700
committerJohn MacFarlane <jgm@berkeley.edu>2015-04-16 12:55:05 -0700
commit5fcf8acaf53d228287af23289505f2609d2ff874 (patch)
tree364f86cdd062b978eccdd4ae80d64fbe472c5fbc /README.md
parent520d5a6fc6a6cf100d9414d588079f2a076801c5 (diff)
Improved README.
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@@ -1,15 +1,11 @@
-CommonMark
-==========
+cmark
+=====
-CommonMark is a rationalized version of Markdown syntax,
-with a [spec][the spec] and BSD-licensed reference
-implementations in C and JavaScript.
+`cmark` is the C reference implementation of [CommonMark], a
+rationalized version of Markdown syntax with a [spec][the spec].
+(For the JavaScript reference implementation, see
+[commonmark.js].)
-[Try it now!](http://try.commonmark.org/)
-
-For more information, see <http://commonmark.org>.
-
-This repository contains the C reference implementation.
It provides a shared library (`libcmark`) with functions for parsing
CommonMark documents to an abstract syntax tree (AST), manipulating
the AST, and rendering the document to HTML, groff man,
@@ -17,16 +13,34 @@ CommonMark, or an XML representation of the AST. It also provides a
command-line program (`cmark`) for parsing and rendering CommonMark
documents.
-The library and program are written in standard C99 and have
-no library dependencies. The parser is very fast, on par with
-[sundown]: see the [benchmarks].
+Advantages of this library:
+
+- **Portable.** The library and program are written in standard
+ C99 and have no external dependencies. It has been tested with
+ MSVC, gcc, tcc, and clang.
+
+- **Fast.** Performance is on par with the fastest existing
+ Markdown parser, [sundown]: see the [benchmarks].
+
+- **Accurate.** The library passes all CommonMark conformance tests.
+
+- **Robust.** The library has been extensively fuzz-tested using
+ american fuzzy lop. The test suite includes pathological cases
+ that bring many other Markdown parsers to a crawl (for example,
+ thousands-deep nested bracketed text or block quotes).
+
+- **Flexible.** CommonMark input is parsed to an AST which can be
+ manipulated programatically prior to rendering.
+
+- **Multiple renderers.** Output in HTML, groff man, CommonMark,
+ and a custom XML format is supported. And it is easy to write new
+ renderers to support other formats.
+
+- **Free.** BSD2-licensed.
It is easy to use `libcmark` in python, lua, ruby, and other dynamic
languages: see the `wrappers/` subdirectory for some simple examples.
-[sundown]: https://github.com/vmg/sundown
-[benchmarks]: benchmarks.md
-[the spec]: http://spec.commonmark.org
Installing
----------
@@ -132,5 +146,10 @@ eliminating several worst-case performance issues.
Nick Wellnhofer contributed many improvements, including
most of the C library's API and its test harness.
+[sundown]: https://github.com/vmg/sundown
+[benchmarks]: benchmarks.md
+[the spec]: http://spec.commonmark.org
+[CommonMark]: http://commonmark.org
[cmake]: http://www.cmake.org/download/
[re2c]: http://re2c.org
+[commonmark.js]: https://github.com/jgm/commonmark.js