LoginSign Up
← Back to all sparks
T

tinkr

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Convert (R)Markdown files to XML, edit them, write them back as (R)Markdown

github.com/ropensci/tinkr ↗

Markdown round-tripping through XML, where every release is another thing it learned not to mangle.

markdownxmlr-packageropenscidocument-tooling
◆Current state
tinkr parses Markdown into XML, lets callers manipulate it with XPath, and writes it back out — the yarn R6 class is the whole interface. Its development is defined by a single hard problem: surviving the round trip without corrupting syntax the XML representation does not natively model. Maintenance is shared between two active contributors and release cadence is roughly annual.
◆Where it's heading
Each release extends the set of constructs that get protected across the round trip — curly braces, escaped brackets, inline math, dollar signs used as currency, French-style dollars, fenced divs, frontmatter. The 0.3.0 notes also add get_protected(), append_md(), and prepend_md(), which is the first sign of building a manipulation API on top of the protection machinery rather than only widening it.
◆Prediction
Expect the protection list to keep growing toward full Quarto syntax coverage, which the first release named as the long-term goal and which fenced divs and frontmatter both move toward.

◆Recent moves

  1. 1y ago

    Frontmatter, fenced divs, and content-insertion methods

    The largest release in the window, and the first that adds ways to modify a document rather than only preserve it — append_md() and prepend_md() sit alongside frontmatter and fenced-div protection. Note the release explicitly exists to unblock downstream packages, with the CRAN version to follow.

    View source ↗
  2. 3y ago

    Protects curly braces, escaped brackets, and link anchors

    Squarely on the round-trip-fidelity arc: three more syntax classes that previously came back changed, plus dropping the stringr dependency. Curly-brace protection is the one that matters for Quarto-style attributes.

    View source ↗
  3. 3y ago

    First release: the extensible yarn R6 class

    ⚡ SPARK

    The founding release, and the one that set the design every later release extends — a document as an R6 object wrapping XML, with protection rules layered on top.

    View source ↗