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Automatically decrement header levels with multi-document linking?

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david.veldhouse

10 Jan, 2018 01:49 PM

Hello all,

New to the forum, and I didn't find this in any discussions:

Is there a way to force Marked 2 to reduce header levels for multi-document files brought into a master index file?

I write a lot of technical content, and sometimes I mix-and-match different sub-sections that have multiple uses.

For example:

topic1.md:

Header topic 1

Sub-header topic 1

...might be useful as a sub-section for a different topic, such as:

newtopic.md:

New Topic

<<[topic1.md]

...in this example I'd like to bring topic1.md into newtopic.md with it's whole header hierarchy reduced by 1, so it's effective a sub-header of New Topic.

Possible?

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Brett on 10 Jan, 2018 02:24 PM

   

   This can't be done using Marked's custom include syntax, but it can be accomplished using the mmd_merge syntax that Marked supports. Create an index file that contains nothing but filenames/paths and put #merge in the first line. You can then use indentation to manually adjust header levels:

   #merge
   index.md
       part1.md
       part2.md
       part3.md
   

   So if part1, 2 and 3.md have first level headers, it would now show up in the compiled document with a second-level header, and any subsequent headers within the file are decremented appropriately.

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2. 2 Posted by david.veldhouse on 10 Jan, 2018 04:10 PM

   

   That's great, and very useful! One problem is that I'm using Discount processing primarily due to its image scaling capabilities. I don't suppose you know if Discount supports #merge?

   Thanks again for the FAST response...

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Brett on 10 Jan, 2018 04:52 PM

   

   The merge is built into marked, it just compiles the document before passing it to whatever processor you're using.

   - Brett

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4. 4 Posted by david.veldhouse on 11 Jan, 2018 02:16 AM

   

   I see. That seems to work as advertised, thanks.

   Of course, I want my cake and eat it too:

   I can't build a dynamic table of contents this way like I can with Mark's slick "include" syntax, can I?

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5. 5 Posted by david.veldhouse on 11 Jan, 2018 02:21 AM

   

   Actually, I think I just answered my own question: putting the <!--TOC--> in the first document after the #merge command seems to work!

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6. Support Staff 6 Posted by Brett on 11 Jan, 2018 02:24 AM

   

   You can't stick a toc tag into the merge file, but you can create a toc.txt (or whatever) with a <!--toc--> tag in it and insert it where you want in the merged document.

   - Brett

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7. 7 Posted by david.veldhouse on 11 Jan, 2018 12:51 PM

   

   Yes, I ended up getting exactly the output I wanted. Thanks so much for the attention, Brett.

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