my scala markdown implementation

Christoph Henkelmann
2011-01-06T17:27:10Z

Hello,

I finally released my Scala Markdown implementation. As I did not get
any feedback on the naming issues, I decided to call it "Actuarius",
after the latin word for the medieval scribe. (The blokes copying books
before there was printing & writing for people who cannot write
themselves). Also I thought it unfair to call it "scala-markdown", as
this sounds somehow official, as it were the "real" markdown
implementation for scala, while there is already an older and more
mature Markdown processor for Scala (i.e.: Knockoff)

You can find the project pages here:
<http://henkelmann.eu/projects/actuarius/>

I also built a web dingus where you can not only try out Actuarius but
PegDown and Knockoff as well:
<http://henkelmann.eu/projects/actuarius/dingus>

I hope it is OK if I call it "Dingus" as well, but I did not really
know
what else to call it. If that is any issue with anyone, I will change
the name, just tell me so. No need to send the lawyers after me ;)

I also did a (large) number of performance tests. I still need to wrap
up the test project, release the code and test cases and write a proper
blog post about it. (I think it would be fair if other people checked &
repeated it, as I am obviously biased). I will publish the details after
this weekend, here the short summary:

* Actuarius twice as fast as Knockoff on "average" input
* Knockoff twice as fast as PegDown on "average" input

Average input is a good mix of plain text, code, quotes, lists,
emphasis, links etc. However both Actuarius and Knockoff have serious
issues with certain "bad" input (e.g.: every word with separate
emphasis
like *foo* *foo* *foo*) were performance suddenly **seriously** degrades
(I hope to fix that in a later release). PegDown's speed is more
constant and reliable (albeit somewhat slower).

Chris