SMH SPEC v1.0

Simple Markup language for Humans and isaac

Introduction

smh is a markup language that's designed to have the readability of yaml with the simplicity of json.

"So simple, you can write your own parser"

There are three types:

• String

  The only escapes that are guaranteed to be recognized by the parser are \", \\, and \n

  Literal newline characters are only included in strings when using double quotes

  this is a string
  "this is a string"
  1.0.0
  3.14159
  123456789

• Array

  [this, is, an, array]
    
  - this
  - is
  - an
  - array

• Object

  author: Chinua Achebe
  country: Nigeria
  image link: images/things-fall-apart.jpg
  language: English
  link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_Fall_Apart
  pages: 209
  title: Things Fall Apart
  year: 1958

Usage:

import { smh, Failure } from 'smh-parser';

let content = smh(`
  - this
  - is
  - an
  - array
`);

if(content instanceof Failure){
    console.log("ERROR - " + content.toString());
} else {
    console.log(content);
}

Examples:

- name: Isaac Shelton
  age: 100
  phone number: (123) 456-789
  email: [email protected]
- name: Joe Gow
  age: 758
  phone number: (321) 654-987
  email: [email protected]

red: #FF0000
green: #00FF00
blue: #0000FF
cyan: #00FFFF
magenta: #FF00FF
yellow: #FFFF00

id: 0001
type: donut
name: Cake
ppu: 0.55
image:
  url: images/0001.jpg
  width: 200
  height: 200
thumbnail:
  url: images/thumbnails/0001.jpg
  width: 32
  height: 32

- id: 1
  first name: Tiffanie
  last name: Bonhan
  email: [email protected]
  ip address: 27.189.213.24
- id: 2
  first name: Marielle
  last name: Scala
  email: [email protected]
  ip address: 232.18.211.108
- id: 3
  first name: Wheeler
  last name: Douce
  email: [email protected]
  ip address: 194.87.70.152
- id: 4
  first name: Benedicta
  last name: Pitcher
  email: [email protected]
  ip address: 121.106.70.157
- id: 5
  first name: Kasey
  last name: Gutherson
  email: [email protected]
  ip address: 32.37.84.111

title: delectus aut autem
user id: fa98b8ec-09d1648a-8f69420b-4b9e8eac
draft: false
pages: 5

Conventions

There are no true, false, or null, but your code may use strings to represent them.

When this is the case, it's convention to use:

• true/"true" for true
• false/"false" for false
• null/"null" for null

Why not use X instead?

Why not just use YAML?

• YAML has a ton of unnecessary "features"
• Way more convoluted than it should be
• Virtually none of the parsers implement the entire spec
• Behaves in suprising, inconsistent, and unexpected ways

Why not just JSON?

• Not as human readable
• Lots of extra characters which make it harder to manipulate quickly

Why not just use TOML?

• It's not as flexible
• It's not as human readable

Why not just use XML?

• It's incredibly verbose and repeats itself
• Ugly and not very human readable

Why SMH?

• So simple, you can even write your own parser
• Human readable
• No ambiguity