Re: [Python-markdown-discuss] Changing the way extensions are loaded

[David W. <wo...@cs...>]

On 21-Feb-08, at 3:34 PM, Waylan Limberg wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 2:33 PM, David Wolever  
> <wo...@cs...> wrote:
>> At the moment, a list extension names is passed to Markdown(), and
>>  the Markdown class is responsible for loading them.
>>  This makes it harder to pragmatically load extensions.
> Harder in what way?
At the moment, you've got to put your extension in a module called  
mdx_eggs.

In the case of DrProject (and, I believe, Trac... But there are  
doubtless others), each component provides its own syntax (among  
other things), so it is preferable to have a loop like:

for provider in wiki_syntax_providers:
	extensions.append(provider.get_wiki_syntax())

where get_wiki_syntax() returns an object which is passed directly to  
Markdown:
Markdown(extensions=extensions).convert("...")

>>  I have written a patch (attached) so that a list of extension  
>> modules
>>  will be passed to Markdown().
> One concern I have it that, unless I missed it, you have completely
> removed the `extension_configs` arg. You only allow key=value pairs
> separated by commas. The `extension_configs` arg makes it possible to
> easily set configs programicly or even pass in complex python data
> structures.
The assumption, which I guess I didn't make clear, what that the  
extensions passed to Markdown were "ready to go" -- they are just  
waiting for a call to extendMarkdown().

So, if you were to be using the abbreviation extension, the code  
would look something like this:
abbr = __import__("abbr")
abbr = abbr.makeExtension(("abbrs", (("RAM", "random access memory"),  
("SSH", "secure shell"))))
Markdown(extensions = [abbr]).convert("I use SSH to check my free RAM")

Alternately, the load_extension function could be modified to take a  
"config" parameter...