class RDoc::Markup

RDoc::Markup parses plain text documents and attempts to decompose them into their constituent parts. Some of these parts are high-level: paragraphs, chunks of verbatim text, list entries and the like. Other parts happen at the character level: a piece of bold text, a word in code font. This markup is similar in spirit to that used on WikiWiki webs, where folks create web pages using a simple set of formatting rules.

RDoc::Markup and other markup formats do no output formatting, this is handled by the RDoc::Markup::Formatter subclasses.

Markup Formats

RDoc supports these markup formats:

You can choose a markup format using the following methods:

per project

If you build your documentation with rake use RDoc::Task#markup.

If you build your documentation by hand run:

rdoc --markup your_favorite_format --write-options

and commit .rdoc_options and ship it with your packaged gem.

per file

At the top of the file use the :markup: directive to set the default format for the rest of the file.

per comment

Use the :markup: directive at the top of a comment you want to write in a different format.

RDoc::Markup

RDoc::Markup is extensible at runtime: you can add new markup elements to be recognized in the documents that RDoc::Markup parses.

RDoc::Markup is intended to be the basis for a family of tools which share the common requirement that simple, plain-text should be rendered in a variety of different output formats and media. It is envisaged that RDoc::Markup could be the basis for formatting RDoc style comment blocks, Wiki entries, and online FAQs.

Synopsis

This code converts input_string to HTML. The conversion takes place in the convert method, so you can use the same RDoc::Markup converter to convert multiple input strings.

require 'rdoc'

h = RDoc::Markup::ToHtml.new(RDoc::Options.new)

puts h.convert(input_string)

You can extend the RDoc::Markup parser to recognize new markup sequences, and to add regexp handling. Here we make WikiWords significant to the parser, and also make the sequences {word} and <no>text…</no> signify strike-through text. We then subclass the HTML output class to deal with these:

require 'rdoc'

class WikiHtml < RDoc::Markup::ToHtml
  def handle_regexp_WIKIWORD(target)
    "<font color=red>" + target.text + "</font>"
  end
end

markup = RDoc::Markup.new
markup.add_word_pair("{", "}", :STRIKE)
markup.add_html("no", :STRIKE)

markup.add_regexp_handling(/\b([A-Z][a-z]+[A-Z]\w+)/, :WIKIWORD)

wh = WikiHtml.new RDoc::Options.new, markup
wh.add_tag(:STRIKE, "<strike>", "</strike>")

puts "<body>#{wh.convert ARGF.read}</body>"

Encoding

Where Encoding support is available, RDoc will automatically convert all documents to the same output encoding. The output encoding can be set via RDoc::Options#encoding and defaults to Encoding.default_external.

RDoc Markup Reference

See RDoc::MarkupReference.