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markdown

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Velocity0.0

The first generation of Markdown rendering for R (born in 2012), based on commonmark. Note that this package is markdown, not *rmarkdown*.

github.com/rstudio/markdown ↗

A package that finished, declared itself done, and handed its core function to a successor.

markdown-renderingmaintenance-modesuccessionr-packagecompatibility-layer
◆Current state
The R markdown package spent 2023 adding real capability — fenced code block attributes, HTML widget rendering, compatibility shims for rmarkdown's document functions. Then 1.13 declared the package feature-complete and maintenance-only, naming litedown as where development continues. Version 2.0 completes that handover: mark(), the package's core function, is now a thin wrapper around litedown::mark(), and users are told to call litedown directly.
◆Where it's heading
This is a controlled retirement rather than abandonment. The maintainer closed out the outstanding feature work first, announced the succession explicitly, and only then reduced the package to a compatibility surface. What remains is a stable shim for the installed base while new work happens in a package with a different name and scope.
◆Prediction
Expect only CRAN-driven fixes here from now on, with any genuinely new rendering capability appearing in litedown instead. The entries state this policy directly, so the main open question is how long the wrapper is kept before deprecation warnings appear.

◆Recent moves

  1. 1y ago

    mark() becomes a thin wrapper around litedown::mark()

    The execution of the succession announced in 1.13: the package's core function no longer implements rendering, it delegates to litedown, and the documentation points users at the successor. Existing code keeps working, which is the whole point of the version — this is a compatibility surface, not a feature release.

    View source ↗
  2. 2y ago

    Package declared feature-complete; work moves to litedown

    ⚡ SPARK

    The release where the package's direction changed: it is declared feature-complete and maintenance-only, with all future development moving to litedown. Everything after this, including the 2.0 wrapper, is the mechanics of a decision made here.

    View source ↗
  3. 2y ago

    Adds compatibility shims for rmarkdown's document functions

    Internal html_document, html_vignette and pdf_document functions arrive as compatibility layers against the rmarkdown functions of the same names, easing the path for users moving between the two. The template also stops wrapping include-before and include-after in div tags, since those values may contain incomplete HTML.

    View source ↗
  4. 2y ago

    Fixes verbatim code blocks with language attributes

    A single rendering fix for verbatim code blocks written with attribute braces. It is the second consecutive release patching fallout from the code-block attribute support added in 1.9.

    View source ↗
  5. 2y ago

    Fixes raw blocks broken by code-block attribute support

    Restores raw block handling that regressed when code block attributes landed in the previous release. Pure repair work on a recently added feature.

    View source ↗
  6. 2y ago

    Fenced code blocks gain attributes; HTML widgets render

    The last substantive feature release before the maintenance-only declaration: attributes on fenced code blocks, rendering support for HTML widgets such as ggplotly, and a numbered-sections fix for documents containing certain Unicode characters. The two releases that follow are cleanup of this work.

    View source ↗