This is an archived copy of the original draft of the ContNet Markup from 2013. It has never been implemented and contains numerous flaws.
title
Title goes here
links
http://whatever.com/ Whatever.com on HTTP
cnp://something.net/else/
../another-link
site
page1 Page 1
another-page Just Another Page
test This maps to /test
foo and this to /test/foo
bar.txt this is /test/foo/bar.txt file
baz.jpg again in /test/foo/baz.jpg
quux
qwe the above page is shown as "quux"
references
cnp://this.is/a/reference ref1 Explanation of the reference
/some/file ref2
content
section The format
This is the ContNet content format. It is designed to be easy to write and parse,
as well as to be readable without any formatting.
section Features
list
- simple to parse by computers
- simple to generate with scripts
- easy to write manually
- raw documents are readable
- no layout definitions, only content
- sections
- lists
- [[/some/page/ links]]
- [[@ref1 references]]
- [[#Features section references]]
- UTF-8 with LF newlines
section Layout
The document is split into several blocks.
Each block is indented by a tab character. The block lasts until the first
line that contains something besides tabs that has lesser or equal
indentation to the block declaration. Indenting a block with more than one
tab is an error. Blank lines can be indented or not and will act the same
(end the paragraph).
A block declaration is the line after which a new indentation level is added.
section Top level blocks
The outtermost block can contain only the top-level blocks and these can
only appear in that block:
list
- title: The page title, a single string (optionally even multiline).
- links: A list of URLs and paths that can point to anywhere.
These could be displayed in, for example, the top menu below the title.
- site: A map of the current website. Consists of the basename of the file
or folder optionally followed by a name to show instead of the filename.
Each entry can have other entries nested.
- references: A list of URLs and paths with identifiers. These can be
later referenced in the link context with the identifier prefixed by the @
character. When used without link text, references could be rendered as,
for example, Wikipedia-style [1] references. The reference's URL can be
#, the empty bookmark, if the reference doesn't contain a link.
- content: Contains the main section of the page. The top level of content
can contain only sections.
Multiple top-level blocks of the same type are concatenated together as if
they were one block. This may be undesirable for the title block, as it will
add a newline.
section Content blocks
list
- section: Optionally named section of the content. Can be nested in other
sections. This is the only block that can be on the top level. If a name
is provided, it is displayed as the section title and can be referenced
as an in-page bookmark in the link context using the name identifier
prefixed with the # character. A section is a generic container for other
blocks or text.
- table: Defines a table. The first line in the table defines the table
header, the rest are cells. Columns are prefixed with the | character.
Each row ends in a newline. To omit the header, leave its cells blank.
The number of columns in the table is equal to the longest row's. If a
line does not begin with |, it's considered to be a continuation of the
previous row's last cell. That way, multi-paragraph cells are possible.
- code: All text inside this block is displayed as it is, without any
parsing being done. This includes additional indents. Optionally, the
language can be specified as a parameter to the block definition, so that
a client that supports syntax highlighting can format that code. The
language name should be the lowercase primary filename extension for a file
containing such source code, such as "c", "js", "cpp", "cob" and "cl".
- list: An unordered list. Each item starts with a - on the start of a
line and lasts until the next item or the end of the list block. Each
list item acts as a section, so it's possible to nest blocks in them.
section Paragraphs
A paragraph is text that is not a block. It lasts until a blank line, the
end of the current block or the start of a new block. The lines within a
paragraph will be joined with spaces. Paragraphs can be in any text
context, such as in list items, table cells, link text, etc.
section Text
Text appears within paragraph. It should be UTF-8 encoded. It can contain
any characters that are not part of the syntax. Notably, the only
characters that can't be included by escaping are tabs on start of a line
and the newline character. Whitespace is collapsed.
Text can be bold (toggle with \*\*) and italic (\_\_). Once toggled, the
style will last until it is toggled again or the end of the paragraph.
section Tables
This format supports tables:
table
| column1 | column2
| row | 1
| row | 2
section Links
A link can be added inline using the link context:
code
[[path text to display]]
The "path" can be an URL or a CNP relative or absolute path, as well as
a reference when prefixed with @ and a bookmark when prefixed with #.
"text to display" is the text to which the link is added. If omitted or
blank, the path will be shown.
section Escaping
URLs, both cnp:// and others, have to be escaped using the standard URL
escaping.
CNP paths have to be escaped just like in the ContNet protocol:
table
| character | escape sequence
| space | \\_
| newline | \\n
| NUL | \\0
| backslash | \\\\
Various parts of the syntax can be escaped too:
table
| character | escape sequence
| table \| | \\|
| list - | \\-
| asterisk | \\*
| underscore | \\_
| link \[ | \\\[
| link \] | \\\]
| backslash | \\\\
section TODO
list
- Embedded content
- Metadata
- TODO