11. Use micromark for alternates

Accepted

Context

I’ve struggled finding a markdown processor for non-Astro controlled transformations.

My needs:

• Take my markdown files
• CommonMark/GFM cmopatabile
• Strip out any non-standard formatting (e.g. expressive-code/frames)
• Render simplest possible markdown
• Include syntax language for code blocks (for possible tooltip helpers)
• Have means of processing custom syntax (directives)
• Allow some form of customization

Ultimately, I think that will be remark-parse. But I wanted to start with something that that was most of what I need out of the box.

Options

markdown-it is extremely simple. I used it in eleventy. And it’s recommended in the Astro: Add an RSS feed doc.

Naturally I tried to pull double duty with it. Then learned that it just isn’t rendering images at all (including in my RSS feed. problem for another day).

micromark has a lot of the features in my checklist, and first-class extensions for featurse that I use. it’s also 100% CommanMark/GFM compatable.

My understanding is that it doesn’t use an AST. So any remark knowledge kinda goes out the window. So our final destination will likely be remark-parse.

[marked][https://github.com/markedjs/marked] is massively popular but lists CommonMark and GFM support as “in progress”.

Decision

Use micromark for alternative markdown processing.

Consequences

• I’ll need to come up with a solution for loading pngs
  • I still can’t figure out how to change Astro’s experimental from webp to png but, even if i could, I don’t think I’d have access to the digest image hashes.
  • But I can grab the images from githubcontent (for my immediate purposes)
• In the short term, I will have 3 different markdown processors.
• Will eventually end up moving to remark-parse and doing it all again.