Downer

Markdown toolkit for Swift and SwiftUI

Supported Platforms

Written in Swift 6 for Apple stuff:

• macOS 14 Sonoma
• iOS/iPadOS/tvOS 17
• watchOS 10
• visionOS

Build with Xcode 16 or newer. Command-line interface depends on Swift Argument Parser.

WYSIWYG WIP

DownerUI.EditorView is a WYSIWYG Markdown editor for iOS/iPadOS and macOS apps. It's like if SwiftUI TextEditor edited plain Markdown/HTML strings instead of attributed strings.

Please, god, don't use EditorView for anything "real" yet. I have enumerated the ways it is not ready for production:

Editor API and Customization/Extension

• Editor content complete styling control with CSS, configurable in editor public interface
• Provided default editor stylesheet with system look-and-feel and applying dynamic system margins, usable as template for custom stylesheet
• @Observable state and functions for document focus and selection #1

System Basics

• Dynamic Type for editor document content via named system CSS values
• Editor content respect light/dark environment appearance via CSS media query
• Editor content respect high-contrast environment via CSS media query #14
• VoiceOver operation for all editor actions and content #5 #6

GFM Features

• Create link with URL/unlink (menu cmd+k) #2
• Insert image with URL
• Insert image picked from files/photos/camera (if camera) #3 #4
• Toggle bold (menu cmd+b)
• Toggle italic (menu cmd+i)
• Toggle strikethrough
• Toggle inline code #8
• Toggle numbered/ordered list
• Toggle bulleted list
• Insert table (UI TBD: adjustable if possible, pre-sized otherwise) #13 👀
• Insert pre-formatted code block #8
• Insert checkbox/checklist item #12
• Toggle block quote #11
• Insert heading (1-6) #10
• Insert ruled theme break #9
• Insert line break #9

Examples

import SwiftUI
import DownerUI
import Downer

@main
struct App: SwiftUI.App {
    var body: some Scene {
        WindowGroup {
            ContentView()
        }
    }
}

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var editor: Editor = Editor(document, baseURL: baseURL)
    
    var body: some View {
        EditorView("Placeholder")
            .editorToolbar()
            .environment(editor)
            .onChange(of: editor.document) {
                print(editor.document)
            }
    }
}

#Preview("Content View") {
    ContentView()
}

private let baseURL: URL? = URL(string: "https://toddheasley.github.io")

private let document: Downer.Document = """
# [Think different](https://apple.com)

## Here’s to the crazy ones.

1. The misfits
2. The rebels
3. The troublemakers

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can `quote` them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

__They push the human race forward__.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

![](favicon.ico)
"""

Acknowledgments

EditorView is my own design, so far, but I cribbed a lot of the "how" from the super complete, functionally adjacent MarkupEditor by Steve Harris.

Command-Line Interface

File-based processing for Mac workflows

Downer package includes downer-cli, an executable target for processing individual Markdown files. Given a path to any text file, downer-cli creates both HTML and formatted Markdown versions, preserving the source file:

toddheasley % ls
README.md
toddheasley % ./downer-cli README.md 
Saved: README~.md
Saved: README.html
toddheasley % ls
README.html	README.md	README~.md

Use --convert to convert HTML in source file to Markdown syntax when possible:

toddheasley % ./downer-cli README.md -c

Use --replace to overwrite the source file:

toddheasley % ls
README.md
toddheasley % ./downer-cli README.md -r
Saved: README.md
Saved: README.html
toddheasley % ls
README.html	README.md

Use --format to generate only one format or the other:

toddheasley % ls
README.md
toddheasley % ./downer-cli README.md -f hypertext
Saved: README.html
toddheasley % ls
README.html	README.md

Downer Reference

Markdown Syntax

Downer parses GitHub Flavored Markdown using cmark-gfm. It mostly behaves like you'd expect, but it's weird and opinionated about a handful of things that I'm weird and opinionated about. Specifically:

• List items are leaf blocks. When list items contain multiple child blocks, only the inline content from the first child block is selected. Additional blocks are discarded.
• Link reference definitions are ignored and discarded during parsing.
• Hypertext format renders strong emphasis with HTML <b> tags, instead of <strong>.
• Basic support for Flavored autolinks is included but disabled by default.

Other Flavored extensions for strikethrough, tables and task lists are fully supported.

Examples

Downer adopts the same document structure and element naming conventions as its underlying parser, Swift Markdown. Elements are re-parsed into self-rendering, concrete types:

import Downer

let document: Document = """
[Think different](https://apple.com)
===

Here's to the crazy ones.
-------------------------

1. The misfits
1. The rebels
1. The troublemakers

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can `quote` them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.

**They push the human race forward**.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
"""

print(document.elements.first) // # [Think different](https://www.apple.com)
print(document.elements.count) // 6

Document has two rendering modes, Format.hypertext and .markdown:

print(document.description(.hypertext))

<h1><a href="https://apple.com">Think different</a></h1>
<h2>Here’s to the crazy ones.</h2>
<ol>
    <li>The misfits</li>
    <li>The rebels</li>
    <li>The troublemakers</li>
</ol>
<p>The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can <code>quote</code> them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.</p>
<p><b>They push the human race forward</b>.</p>
<p>And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.</p>

Markdown renders by default:

print(document)

# [Think different](https://apple.com)

## Here’s to the crazy ones.

1. The misfits
2. The rebels
3. The troublemakers

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can `quote` them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

__They push the human race forward__.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

BYO Autolinks

Autolink.link and .email are the two included autolinking rules. They cover only the least fuzzy cases where plain-text web and email addresses are prefixed with http:, https: or mailto: protocols.

Autolink at your own risk:

extension Autolink: CaseIterable {
    static let fileLink: Self = Self("File", "(?<!\")(file:\\/\\/\\/)([\\w\\-\\.!~?&+\\*'\"(),\\/]+)", "<a href=\"$1$2\">$2</a>")
    static let allCases: [Self] = [.link, .fileLink]
}

let html: String = document.description(.hypertext(Autolink.allCases + [
    Autolink("Path", "(^|\\s)/([\\w\\-\\.!~#?&=+\\*'\"(),\\/]+)", "$1<a href=\"$2\">$2</a>")
]))