Re: [Docutils-develop] feature-requests #86 Replace recommonmark with myst-docutils

[Guenter M. <mi...@us...>]

Dear Takeshi KOMIYA,

thank you for the fast reply.

On 2022-01-08, Takeshi KOMIYA wrote:

> I finished my work. It has been fully compatible with CommonMark.

I tested pycmark today and could get it to work with `docutils-cli.py`
after a small modification:

Running::

  docutils-cli --parser=pycmark
  
I got a ``NotImplementedError('subclass must override this method')``.

The reason is, that `docutils.parsers.get_parser_class(parser_name)`
looks for a `Parser` class inside the module named `parser_name`.
However, pycmark/__init__.py imports the upstream base class:

    from docutils.parsers import Parser

    
I could fix this changing the above import line to 

    import docutils.parsers
    
and the parser class definition to start with

    class Parser(docutils.parsers.Parser):
        """CommonMark parser for docutils."""

Now, pycmark.Parser is the CommonMark parser (as expected by Docutils)
and `docutils-cli --parser=pycmark` worked as a charm.
A quick-and-dirty test run showed that "pycmark" can act
as a handy drop-in Markdown/CommonMark parser.

The advantage of `docutils-cli --parser=pycmark` over pycmark's `md2html`
is, that it offers the choice of all available writers from the command
line.

> I thought to release v1.0 after that, but I lost my interest for it
> because myst-parser has appeared.

Would you consider the above change in pycmark
(With either adapting or dropping the `md2html` "entry-point")?

As a second best alternative, I could write a thin wrapper module in
Docutils.

We would then have a selection of 3 CommonMark parsers:

myst:
  fully-featured and actively maintained
  
pycmark:
  lightweight, no further dependencies

recommonmark:
  long standing (also available as Debian package)
  unmaintained/deprecated :(
  
  
Thanks,
Günter