[Python-markdown-discuss] Looking for advices to write a markdown plugin

[Alexandre L. <new...@al...>]

Hello,

I wrote a simple text-publishing Django application enabling per 
paragraph comments. It splits a texts into chunks and let people comment 
them. The project is hosted at http://github.com/aleray/close-commenting 
and a demo is visible there: 
http://closecommenting.stdin.fr/one-possible-scenario-for-a-collective-future.html

It uses markdown in its back-end to format the texts and right now they 
are split according to their first level HTML tags (see 
http://github.com/aleray/close-commenting/blob/master/closecommenting/models.py 
line 93)

I'm looking for writing a markdown extensions that would allow one to 
arbitrary tell the parser semantic units to comment on instead of 
relying on the document structure. For instance, in some case it might 
make more sens to comment two <p/> together, or to have two comments in 
one <p/>.

A quick fix is to enclose units in <div/> but it is not very elegant. My 
first idea was to make a proper syntax was to add a "§" glyph to 
indicate a commentable section. eg.

§ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas 
hendrerit mattis faucibus. Vivamus auctor sollicitudin urna, et 
fringilla purus auctor id. Duis laoreet feugiat magna, ac consequat 
lectus sagittis vitae.
§ Phasellus non egestas urna. Morbi eget lacus felis. Vivamus molestie 
est quis diam feugiat ac faucibus justo vulputate. Mauris sed lectus 
arcu. Fusce euismod suscipit ligula a convallis.
§ ...

or 2 paragraphs together

§ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas 
hendrerit mattis faucibus. Vivamus auctor sollicitudin urna, et 
fringilla purus auctor id. Duis laoreet feugiat magna, ac consequat 
lectus sagittis vitae.
§ Phasellus non egestas urna. Morbi eget lacus felis. Vivamus molestie 
est quis diam feugiat ac faucibus justo vulputate. Mauris sed lectus 
arcu. Fusce euismod suscipit ligula a convallis. Donec iaculis augue sit 
amet magna tempor at auctor tellus vehicula. Maecenas ac leo justo. 
Phasellus laoreet hendrerit mauris, vitae scelerisque justo sollicitudin 
sed. Etiam molestie sodales leo at feugiat. In hac habitasse platea 
dictumst. Pellentesque at enim sed ante mollis fermentum. Donec quis 
enim dictum nibh fermentum imperdiet.

Nullam urna orci, iaculis non porttitor at, ultricies dictum metus. 
Quisque viverra lacus eu ante viverra blandit. Etiam tempor, ante ac 
tincidunt lobortis, arcu risus fringilla justo, non tempus velit nisl 
fermentum erat. Etiam semper, sapien sed condimentum elementum, magna 
neque viverra dolor, blandit suscipit arcu mauris porta lorem. Nulla 
orci massa, ultrices ut congue nec, pretium aliquam tortor. Donec 
imperdiet laoreet purus ac luctus. Sed sit amet ante tellus, at sodales 
metus. Praesent scelerisque, sem ut porta rutrum, lorem ante ornare 
diam, pharetra feugiat orci odio id nisl. Praesent imperdiet pharetra 
pulvinar. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. 
Quisque lobortis sollicitudin placerat. Maecenas ut pharetra purus. 
Maecenas sit amet magna ac dui euismod accumsan ac id ligula. Curabitur 
sit amet lorem non purus vehicula mollis accumsan at tellus. Maecenas 
consectetur posuere laoreet. Quisque risus leo, iaculis sit amet aliquam 
ac, ultricies sed lectus. Nam non libero ligula. Nullam volutpat 
tincidunt tortor non venenatis. Nam ultricies lacus a leo porta 
tincidunt fringilla quam hendrerit. In imperdiet imperdiet nibh, a 
bibendum erat interdum in.

§ ...

However it gets more complex with other HTML elements such as lists, 
headers etc.

Do you have any idea on how I could implement such a syntax?

Best,

Alexandre Leray