Compiler for a Markdown-like syntax intended for note-taking. Jotdown is:

• Based on the Markdown format
• Pretty and readable in plain-text
• Version-controllable documents
• Ünì©ôðé-friendly
• A language for math formulas like: «e^[i pi] + 1 = 0»
• Translatable to HTML, LATEX, RTF, and extensible for other formats
• Open source

To parse a single jotdown file (suggested extension: .jd), use jd:

$ jd <input_file.jd> [-o <output_file>] [-f <format>] [-s <stylesheet>]

The -o, f, and -s parameters are optional. The output filename will be out if one is not specified. The default output format is HTML. The default stylesheet is the included Solarized-based theme.

To export a whole directory structure of jotdown files, just pass a directory to jd:

$ jd <directory> [-o <output_directory>] [-f <format>] [-s <stylesheet>]

The directory structure will be replicated under output_directory, and all .jd files will be translated to the specified output format. Links to other .jd files are automatically converted to the correct file extension. The stylesheet file will be copied to output_directory and all output documents will link to it instead of embedding its text. Other files found in side directory will be copied over verbatim. This mode allows, for example, to have a source tree for a website including Jotdown source documents, custom HTML, images, etc. that will be exported with a single command, to a single directory that is ready to be deployed.

$ jd <input> [-o <output>] [-f <format>] [-s <stylesheet>] [-r | --md-refs]

• -r or --md-refs: Treat citation-style links in a manner compatible with Markdown. Jotdown's own behaviour (allowing markup inside citations, not only links) is default.
• -a or --author: Specify an author for the compiled document. Defaults to the system's current user name.

The provided sample document (text.jd) is encoded as UTF-8, and so it will work unmodified only on systems where UTF-8 is default, as Python will use the system's default encoding for reading files. Jotdown could be hard-coded to read files as UTF-8, but I chose not to because a user's .jd files will presumably be in their system's encoding of choice.

Because of this, reading your own .jd files you edited as plaintext should work with no issues on any system.

Output, however, is hard-coded, most likely to UTF-8 (depending on the format). Jotdown's output files are not intended to be modified by hand, so their encoding should not be a problem. A <meta charset="UTF-8"> tag is included in every generated HTML file, so any reasonable browser will be able to handle it, special characters and all.

Jotdown is designed to support output in many different formats. At the time, HTML output is supported (which includes a bit of MathML), as well as a debug mode that allows for inspection of the parse tree. LATEX output is planned, but work has not yet started.

Jotdown includes CSS files that will be embedded in every HTML document to style them. The default stylesheet, solarized.css is based on the Solarized color scheme for maximum readability. A stylesheet is also included to mimic the look of IEEE publications (ieee.css), to test and demontstrate Jotdown's readiness for use as a source language in scientific manuscripts.

Some math-related features (namely capital-sigma notation for sums, capital-pi notation for products, and integrals) do not have a clean way to be marked up as HTML. For this reason, they are output as MathML inside <math> tags. MathML is supported by Firefox, Opera and Safari, but not by Chrome. Chrome users, be warned. All other expressions are kept as pure HTML for maximum compatibility.