Feature request: allow changing default options

[kylebarbour]

A common mechanism for configuring alternate default options in Unix environments is a dotfile, e.g. .bashrc or .vimrc. It would be really helpful to be able to set default options in .kramdown. It could use the same syntax as the already-existing {::options ... /} syntax:

$ cat .kramdown
 auto_ids="false"
 footnote_nr="5"
$

Currently I solve this problem by aliasing kramdown to include my default settings, but I think this would be more elegant.

Thanks for considering!

[gettalong]

Thanks for this idea - this makes sense and can easily be implemented for the kramdown binary.

As for the details:

• The configuration file should probably live under the XDG configuration directory, normally ~/.config/, so the file name would probably be ~/.config/kramdown. As for macOS ~/Library/Preferences/kramdown would probably the right location? (just guessing here since I'm not using macOS). As for Windows: any pointers?

• For the file format I can imagine using either YAML (as done with the kramdown tests) or the {::options .../} syntax - what do you think would be easier for most users?

[kylebarbour]

I think ~/.config/kramdown makes sense. I wish I could offer any thoughts regarding Windows or MacOS - I use Linux myself.

I think both YAML and the native {::options ../} syntax are equally intelligible. I like YAML myself and think it's pretty straightforward but don't have much of a preference either way. I think people will be able to follow either.

Thanks very much!

[gettalong]

Two Linux users - it's the year of the Linux desktop! 😉

The {::options /} syntax actually uses YAML for value parsing (as does the kramdown binary).

Maybe the easiest thing would be allowing to specify the binary options like on the command line, e.g.

$ cat ~/.config/kramdown
--auto-ids false --footnote-nr 5

This would imply no learning curve whatsoever - what do you think?

[kylebarbour]

Haha, we're finally taking over! :)

I think that's reasonable - your call. I haven't seen that style in config files but I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Personally I like

auto-ids: false
footnote-nr: 5

which is pretty common YAML notation, but I think any of your suggestions is equally comprehensible.

[gettalong]

I will go with your suggested YAML approach - will be in the next release.

[kylebarbour]

I'm having trouble using this in the new release. After hacking on it for a while, I think the issue may be that loading $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kramdownrc generates options as strings and not symbols. In other words, running kramdown --smart-quotes "apos,apos,quot,quot" file.md works fine and on internal inspection the options hash contains {:smart_quotes=>["apos", "apos", "quot", "quot"]}, but when smart-quotes: "apos,apos,quot,quot" is in ~/.config/kramdownrc the options aren't run and the options hash contains {"smart-quotes"=>"apos,apos,quot,quot"}.

Any thoughts?

[gettalong]

You need to use the option name, not the command line switch used for the option name, i.e. smart_quote instead of smart-quote.

[kylebarbour]

Aaaaaaah, thanks!