A lightweight, fast, pure-Python Markdown parser
Small. Walkable. Full of shortcuts. Sketched on a Parisian hill.
Introduction
Montmark turns Markdown into HTML. It is more than 90% compliant with CommonMark specification.
WORK IN PROGRESS! This is ALPHA quality software. Do not use it in production!
Plan
- Continue ongoing updates progressively improving CommonMark compliance toward to near 100%
- Add support for GitHub tables
- Add streaming mode for low-memory processing of very large files
- Optimize
Installation
As a package from PyPI
As a standalone file
file montmark.py can be downloaded from GitHub or extracted from the PyPI package and used as a standalone script or module.
CLI
One of these for package:
montmark FILE
python3 -m montmark FILE
For standalone script:
the FILE argument may be a file path or - for standard input (stdin).
API
>>> import montmark >>> html_string = montmark.convert(markdown_string)
Preliminary benchmark
Done with bench script and syntax.md sample from Mistletoe, on a 14th gen Intel Core i5 running Ubuntu 24.04
| Parser | Execution Time (s) | Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
| montmark 0.0.6 | 4.85 | 5.73 |
| markdown_it 4.2.0 | 5.61 | 4.95 |
| mistune 3.2.1 | 6.53 | 4.25 |
| mistletoe 1.5.1 | 7.30 | 3.81 |
| marko 2.2.3 | 23.30 | 1.19 |
CommonMark compliance
| Section | OK | Total | % OK | Discrepancies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tabs | 10 | 11 | 90% | 9 |
| Backslash escapes | 13 | 13 | 100% | |
| Entity and numeric character references | 17 | 17 | 100% | |
| Precedence | 1 | 1 | 100% | |
| Thematic breaks | 18 | 19 | 94% | 61 |
| ATX headings | 18 | 18 | 100% | |
| Setext headings | 26 | 27 | 96% | 91 |
| Indented code blocks | 11 | 12 | 91% | 109 |
| Fenced code blocks | 29 | 29 | 100% | |
| HTML blocks | 38 | 44 | 86% | 148,174,175,187,190,191 |
| Link reference definitions | 23 | 27 | 85% | 201,208,209,210 |
| Paragraphs | 8 | 8 | 100% | |
| Blank lines | 1 | 1 | 100% | |
| Block quotes | 21 | 25 | 84% | 235,237,238,252 |
| List items | 47 | 48 | 97% | 300 |
| Lists | 22 | 26 | 84% | 312,313,319,326 |
| Inlines | 1 | 1 | 100% | |
| Code spans | 22 | 22 | 100% | |
| Emphasis and strong emphasis | 126 | 132 | 95% | 412,430,445,461,469,470 |
| Links | 79 | 90 | 87% | 520,523,533,541,545,546,556,559,568,569,571 |
| Images | 17 | 22 | 77% | 574,575,587,590,593 |
| Autolinks | 18 | 19 | 94% | 610 |
| Raw HTML | 16 | 20 | 80% | 616,619,629,632 |
| Hard line breaks | 14 | 15 | 93% | 644 |
| Soft line breaks | 2 | 2 | 100% | |
| Textual content | 3 | 3 | 100% | |
| ALL | 601 | 652 | 92% |
Open-Source, not Open-Contribution yet
Montmark is MIT licensed but is currently closed to contributions.
Personal note: this is a pet projet of mine and my time is limited. First I need to focus on my roadmap (new features and refactoring) and then I will happily accept contributions when everything is a little more stabilised.