Quarkdown: A Markdown-Based Typesetting System for Books and Presentations 75

What is Quarkdown?

Quarkdown is a Markdown-based typesetting system that is flexible and extensible. It can compile projects into printable books or interactive PPT presentations. It features powerful Markdown extensions that support scripting, conditional statements, loops, and more. You can also define functions and variables within Markdown, and even create libraries for others to use.

Features of Quarkdown

• Highly extensible: It is an extension of CommonMark and GFM, offering functions and other syntax extensions. Users can define custom functions and variables, while the standard library provides layout builders, I/O operations, mathematical computations, and more.

• Multiple output formats: It can compile into printable books or interactive presentations, with output formats including HTML, PDF, and others.

• Real-time preview and fast compilation: It offers a real-time preview feature and fast compilation speed, allowing you to see the document's effect instantly while editing.

Use Cases for Quarkdown

• Writing books and articles: It supports headers, footers, tables of contents, and complex typesetting, making creation convenient.

• Creating presentations: It integrates with reveal.js to create interactive presentations, ideal for academic reports and product showcases.

• Typesetting research papers: It supports mathematical formulas and citations, making it suitable for research paper typesetting.

• Personal blogs and websites: It provides flexible layout and style customization for personal blogs and static websites.

Installing and Using Quarkdown

1. Installation: Download quarkdown.zip from the releases page, or build it with gradlew distZip. After extracting, the bin directory contains executable scripts that can be added to PATH for convenience. Java 17 or higher is required.

2. Creating a project: Run quarkdown create [directory] to launch the project wizard and quickly set up a new project. You can also manually create .qmd source files.

3. Compilation: Run quarkdown c file.qmd to compile the specified file and save the output. If the project has multiple source files, the target file must be the root file.

Advantages of Quarkdown

Compared to standard Markdown, Quarkdown is more powerful and can meet complex typesetting and dynamic content needs; compared to LaTeX, it is more concise and readable, while also offering full document control and scripting capabilities.

Project Address

Official Website:https://quarkdown.com/

Github:https://github.com/iamgio/quarkdown