Markdown 2 Medium Tool

Keith Hodges

2 min read·

14 hours ago

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I found this very useful Markdown to Medium conversion tool. (I claim no credit for the code).

I have been experimenting with different website tools and generators to use for our “Anglic Infrastructure” site and documentation, and yet again I am struck by our tendency to settle for the lowest common denominator when it comes to tools and formats. In other words —

Markdown, there has to be something better than this!

Thinking about how we generate documents commercially for documentation and presentation my experiments led me to this as a first attempt. It’s json rendered through a custom template engine.

I used json resume to create a CV, and it gave me 65 themes. Since only AI reads CVs these days, we could just give them the json!

Yet again, though it serves its purpose, this is yet another lowest common denominator solution. Now we have AI to help us, I think we could do much better.

When you ask an LLM to do some research for you, it doesn’t put any effort into establishing a standard data schema, or validation of input fields, unless you ask it to.

I have in mind a pipeline of structured data in nickel through to typset documents. Nickel is a “gradually typed” configuration language, which is particularly suited to this task.

recipes.ncl

{ recipes = { classic_margherita_pizza = { name = "Classic Margherita Pizza", prep_time_mins = 20, cook_time_mins = 10, servings = 2, ingredients = [ "1 pizza dough ball", "1/2 cup tomato sauce", "120g fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced", "Fresh basil leaves", "1 tbsp olive oil" ], instructions = [ "Preheat your oven and pizza stone to 250°C (480°F).", "Stretch the pizza dough into a 12-inch circle on parchment paper.", "Spread the tomato sauce evenly over the dough, leaving a small border.", "Arrange the mozzarella slices on top.", "Bake for 8–10 minutes until the crust is golden and cheese is bubbly.", "Garnish with fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil before slicing." ] }

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Example — Typst output

I think this has immense possibilities, drop me a line if you have a use-case that could drive development.