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1. Overview

Lambdoc is a library providing support for semantically rich documents in web applications, built with Ocsigen/Eliom [1] integration in mind. It includes parsers for four different markup languages: Lambtex, Lambxml, Lambwiki, and Markdown. The first is inspired by LaTeX, the second is an XML-based markup based on HTML, the third is a lightweight markup language in the spirit of Wiki Creole, and the last is the popular lightweight markup language. The library also includes the possibility of outputing any Lambdoc document as an Ocsigen (TyXML) HTML value.

Additional capabilities include the runtime customisation of available document features (you may, for example, declare that a certain class of users is only allowed to produce documents containing nothing more than paragraphs of plain text), detailed error messages, and the definition of basic macros. Particularly of note is a powerful extension mechanism that allows the definition of custom commands tailored to a particular application. It also ships with 'lambcmd', a CLI application that allows the conversion between any of the input formats into one of the supported output targets.

2. Dependencies

The library depends on Blahcaml [2], Camlhighlight [3], Menhir [4], OCaml-re [5], Sedlex [6], Sexplib [7], TyXML [8], and Xmlm [9]. The CLI application 'lambcmd' depends also on Cmdliner [10], and the unit tests depend on Alcotest [11].

3. Building and installing

The build system relies on OASIS. The customary sequence of './configure', 'make', and 'make install' is used to build and install the library and the lambcmd CLI application. Run 'make doc' to generate the API documentation.

4. License

Lambdoc is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL version 2. See LICENSE file for full license text.

5. Notes on the provided CSS

Inside the 'css' directory you will find the sample CSS adapted to the HTML5 output generated by the Lambdoc_whtml5_writer module. It is fairly simple yet pleasant looking, and a good starting point if you want to customise it for your own sites.

You will note that most elements are given their own class name, prefixed by the identifier 'doc'. Inline bold elements, for example, are identified by the class 'doc_bold'. This solution was preferred over the alternative of referrencing '.doc b' because it has much better performance. It does have the disadvantage of producing larger markup, however.

References

[1] https://www.ocsigen.org/ [2] https://blahcaml.forge.ocamlcore.org/ [3] https://camlhighlight.forge.ocamlcore.org/ [4] https://cristal.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/ [5] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-re [6] https://github.com/alainfrisch/sedlex [7] https://github.com/janestreet/sexplib [8] https://www.ocsigen.org/tyxml [9] https://erratique.ch/software/xmlm [10] https://erratique.ch/software/cmdliner [11] https://github.com/mirage/alcotest