109 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
# Md2Vim #
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Writing technical documentation for [Vim](http://www.vim.org/) extensions is not very exciting; having to manually
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convert what you've just written in [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) to the
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[vimdoc](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html) help format is even less fun. As I grew tired of doing this
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over and over for my [ArgWrap](/projects/argwrap/) extension, I decided to formally solve this problem for myself and
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others, creating the Md2Vim converter tool.
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Md2Vim is implemented in [Golang](https://golang.org/) as a custom renderer for the
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[blackfriday](https://github.com/russross/blackfriday) Markdown processor. Maintainability, ease of use, and beautiful
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vimdoc output were primary considerations in its design.
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## Installation ##
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If you already have the Go environment and toolchain set up, you can get the latest version by running:
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```
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$ go get github.com/FooSoft/md2vim
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```
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Otherwise, you can use the pre-built binaries for the platforms below:
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* [Linux](http://foosoft.net/projects/md2vim/dl/md2vim-linux64.tar.gz)
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* [OSX](http://foosoft.net/projects/md2vim/dl/md2vim-darwin64.tar.gz)
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* [Windows](http://foosoft.net/projects/md2vim/dl/md2vim-win32.zip)
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## Example ##
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Let's generate the documentation for [ArgWrap](/projects/argwrap/) by executing the command shown below (split into
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multiple lines due to length considerations):
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```
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$ md2vim -desc "Wrap and unwrap function arguments, lists, and dictionaries in Vim"
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-cols=120
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README.md
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doc/argwrap.txt
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```
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And here is the animation of it happening in a terminal window; notice the pretty help file layout Vim.
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## Requirements ##
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Md2Vim makes the reasonable assumption that your document headings are arranged in a single-root hierarchy for the
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purposes of table of contents generation. As long as you have exactly one top level heading (usually the title of your
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extension), with sub-headings following it (directions for installation, configurations, etc.) everything will look and
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work great. If you don't want to follow this hierarchy in your help file, you can still use this tool as long as you
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disable table of contents generation.
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## Usage ##
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Executing Md2Vim with the -help command line argument will trigger online help to be displayed. The list below provides
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a more detailed description of what the parameters do.
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* `cols`
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The number of columns used for laying out vimdoc files to make them look as good as possible with your content.
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Notice that file contents will not be wrapped to this value; this is purely for such things as horizontal rule
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widths and help tag positioning. This defaults to 80, but that's a bit too narrow for some people.
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* `desc`
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Vim help files are supposed to start with the following two fields on the first line:
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```
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filename.txt Description of this help file's contents
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```
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The first field is the filename of the generated vimdoc help file; the second is the description can you provide
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with this parameter.
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* `norules`
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By default, we generate horizontal rules above level 1-2 headings, as shown below:
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```
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================================================================================
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Level 1 Heading
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Level 2 Heading
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```
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If you don't like the way it looks you can turn it off.
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* `notoc`
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If you don't want to generate a table of contents you can specify this argument. The table of contents lists all of
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the child headings underneath the primary heading; it is always inserted right before the second heading in your
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document.
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* `pascal`
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By default, all help tags get converted to lower case and space delimited words are joined with underscores.
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```
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rigellians-how_to_cook_for_fourty_humans
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```
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If you prefer the PascalCase way of doing things, set this flag and your output will look like this:
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```
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Rigellians-HowToCookForFourtyHumans
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```
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* `tabs`
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If you don't like four space tabs for some reason you can change it to something else with this parameter.
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