Wouldn't it be nice if you could put really basic Markdown formatting in one-line messages, like chat messages or titles of things? Full Markdown is too featureful, and plain text is plain. This is a middle ground.
Supported syntax:
[links](http://example.com)
*italic*
**boldface**
That's it. That's literally all the syntax. HTML is escaped, and unlike most Markdown dialects, the parser can handle links like
[this thing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(data_structure))
However, it can only handle a single level of parenthesis nesting. This is almost always sufficient.
Building this module requires Ragel, unless you get it from PyPI.