Writing Stata help files is a pain. Writing Markdown isn't!
pandoc-smcl bridges that gap.
pandoc-smcl is very much a work in progress. I don't currently recommend you use it for anything.
Right now, pandoc-smcl is capable of generating the (very simple) help files for maptile geography templates. But it does not have the capability of generating anything resembling a typical help file for a Stata program. There are many types of Markdown syntax that it does not recognize. It will often output HTML instead of SMCL.
For the next steps of development, I plan to:
- Use pandoc-smcl to re-create the help files for all my Stata programs from Markdown, expanding its capabilities as I go.
- Review and clean up the code, verifying whether there are additional syntax elements in Markdown or SMCL that are not used in my own help files, but should be supported.
- Write your help file in Markdown.
- Use pandoc with pandoc-smcl to convert your Markdown into valid SMCL.
- Check out your beautiful help file in the Stata Viewer.
- Share it with others.
Markdown is an extremely popular markup language invented by John Gruber, which is designed to be simultaneously human-readable and machine-readable. SMCL is a markup language invented by StataCorp, which is used to format all text displayed in Stata.
As of March 2015, I'm unaware of any easy way to write SMCL-formatted help files. I've spent many hours sitting with my plain-text editor and the SMCL reference documents, crafting help files for Stata programs. Tired of hacking together SMCL formatting, I decided to find an easier way of writing and maintaining Stata help files. Failing to find one, I decided to make one.