A while back I saw glow and I won­dered ... how hard could it be to write that?

I mean, it looks im­pres­sive! It ren­ders mark­down to a ter­mi­nal!

Well, it's not all that hard if you have a nice mark­down pars­er you can hack, so I spent a cou­ple of hours and wrote it.

It's called mark­term and it ... well, it's done?

You can use it as a li­brary from Crys­tal, or you can use the mark­term bi­na­ry.

It can syn­tax high­light code (as long as you have chro­ma in­stalled), it does the right thing when piped to an­oth­er pro­gram, and it tries to look good but not gaudy.

What will I use it for?

Show­ing CLI pro­gram's help. I am us­ing do­copt late­ly and the for­mat of the do­copt in­put is al­most mark­down. With a bit of flair it can be both, and us­ing mark­term I can show it in a ter­mi­nal in a much nicer way than usu­al.

Ex­tra: why am I start­ing so many projects late­ly?

• Be­cause it makes me hap­py
• Be­cause in most cas­es it's not code that will need main­te­nance. I ex­pect mark­term to just work for the next 10 years with­out me touch­ing it, if need­ed.
• Be­cause I can