I went ahead with this and
- switched my blog to djot
- plan to maintain cdjot and gemtext.lua
- marked my smu fork as unmaintained and added a short retro to the readme
- marked my md2gemini fork as unmaintained
- wrote a blog post about it
The re·sil·ient collection of modules for the #SILE #digitalTypesetting system is my solution for streamlining the production of #PDF books “from the front to the back cover” using lightweight markup languages such as #djot
More than a year ago, I fancied the idea of using gradients instead of solid colors in the design of some elements....
#Markdown has horrible edge cases and despite the valiant effort of #CommonMark, the dialects seem to diverge and multiply over time. I consider switching my personal stuff to #djot where possible: https://djot.net/
Ideas:
- Stop working on #smu https://github.com/karlb/smu and maintain either https://github.com/karlb/cdjot or https://github.com/karlb/minipandoc instead
- Use https://github.com/karlb/gemtext.lua to generate #gemtext (for #geminiprotocol instead of the unmaintained https://github.com/karlb/md2gemini
Thoughts?
🎉 #Djot (#PHP) is now officially available worldwide as #plugin in Wordpress installs: https://wordpress.org/plugins/djot-markup/
Please feel free to test it, review and rate it so people have confidence in switching over from markdown or other systems. Safer than MD.
Use in Gutenberg blocks and more.
Most notably, it now contains also useful addons like
- TOC
- Permalinks (clickable/copyable)
- Enhanced syntax (e.g. Markdown compatibility mode)
- Permissions per spec element (author vs commenter etc)
Like you, I use markdown to write notes in Joplin. And to write Fedi posts such as this one. (wafrn, the Fedi software I am using, supports writing posts in markdown.)
My only suggestion: do not get seduced by markdown's ease of use. Do not try to use it indiscriminately. Do not use it for documents that require complex markup (text with lots of subscripts/superscripts, mathematical equations, chemical formulae, nested sections, tables, columns, etc.), or even for simple but very long documents (long-form writing, books).
Basically, limit its use to short documents/notes that require very little markup.
This article is a good overview of the benefits and limitations of markdown.
As an aside, I hope djot replaces markdown as the most popular lightweight markup language in the near future.
Djot IntelliJ Plugin - Djot markup language support for JetBrains IDEs (PhpStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, etc.) - php-collective/djot-intellij
Thanks to @dereuromark, phpDocumentor Guides now has support for #djot 🎉
Djot is an improved and more precisely specified alternative to Markdown, designed to remove ambiguities and edge. It offers clearer rules, better nesting, and more consistent parsing, which makes it especially well-suited for technical documentation.
Learn more about djot: https://djot.net
Finally ready to be used.
Check out my post about it: https://www.dereuromark.de/2025/12/09/djot-php-a-modern-markup-parser/
You can also play around in the sandbox and get a feel of it.
Is it the markdown successor we have been waiting for?
Karl Bartel
Omikhleia - Dragon Brumeux
Mark
arvind
phpDocumentor