text mode

[amitu]

Most documents are texts. Some of the document is used to represent user layout etc, but most is text. What if the outer document in fastn (ftd file) is text block. We also create text components, which only take single text label. And finally we create some special text roles, like heading, link, bold etc, with markdown like syntax.

-- ;; on its own indicates start of text mode 

# this is a document

this is the body with [link](/) in it.

- this is a
- list with
- many items

-- ds.code: code is in form of sections
lang: py

this is a code blcok

-- ds.quote: John Doe

It wasn't me.  ;; this gets passed to quote.

-- end: ds.quote ;; if we want to switch from body to text mode we have to end body
                 ;; we did not have to end `ds.code` block above because `-- ds.quote:`
                 ;; ended it
;; another option is we use just a line with two dashes to end the body e.g.,:
-- 

# regular text mode

We are extending markdown with -- syntax for "block" / UI stuff.

Markdown Role Override

# foo

Is equivalent to:

-- ftd.column:
markdown-roles: ftd.markdown-roles

# foo

-- end: ftd.column

ftd.markdown-roles is a module that defines a bunch of markdown related functions, eg .h1, which will get called with foo as caption input in this case.

Whenever we are in text mode, the immediate outer container can define the "markdown-roles" module to use to render the markdown roles found in the text.

Most documents would not be such "naked markdown files":

# foo

But:

-- ds.page: title of the page

The markdown body of the page

-- end: ds.page ;; optional?

Default To Text

Document starts in text mode, and after any section, if the section does not accept a body, we go back to text mode.

[amitu]

Final (?) Decision On This

Every time we encounter text after a section that does not take body, the text is converted to text node using the .markdown-roles of the container, and passed to container.

If the section takes body, and no children, it will not have -- end: <section-name>, and if you want to create a text node after the body, use -- on a line on its own (comments allowed after -- ).