In the world of plaintext, you have to choose between "livable" human-friendly documents in .md and .txt (for your minimalist todo lists and such) and entirely "computer writable" data files (.json, .xml). But what if you want to combine prose with programmatically read/writeable data in one file?

dmark is first and foremost a language which adds the json syntax to human-friendly prose documents to make documents that are both livable and programmatically read/writeable. The point is to bridge the gap between these two facets of plaintext.

dmark.py contains a Dmark class which can be used to parse and modify dmark files.

The .dm extension is hereby seized for dmark files!

See the JSON spec.

For now, the dmark language is identical in function to JSON. Roughly, in the terminology of the JSON spec, a value can be an "object" (dict), "array" (list), string, or number. An object maps strings to values, and an array contains values. These values can be expressed in plaintext dmark files. The syntax for a dmark value is determined by both the type of the value and the type of the value containing it. Parent-child relationships are shown with indentation.

"For now" because conceivably one could implement tables as well...

Strings and numbers inside an object:

@key1: stringstringstring
@key2: 420133769

One can access the values like this: object["key1"].

Strings and numbers inside an array:

@ iamtheverymodelofamodernmajorgeneral
@ 3.1415

One can access the values like this: array[0].

An object inside an object:

@key1
	@key2: singsingsing
	@key3: -111

One can access the values like this: object["key1"]["key2"].

An object inside an array:

@
	@key1: iveinformationvegetableanimalandmineral
	@key2: 0

One can access the values like this: array[0]["key1"].

Multi-line strings are represented like this:

@
	@ {
		This is a multi line string!
		Here is the next line.
	}

The above string is "\n\t\tThis is a multi line string!\n\t\tHere is the next line.\n\t".

Using the Dmark class in dmark.py, the document object is the value attribute. See below for examples.

Document "todo.dm":

### LONG TERM

- Write romantic poem
- Become CEO of Apple

Who would even want to become CEO of Apple?


### MID TERM

- Fix home server
- Update CV

Stats:
@completed: 278

@days
	@
		@date: Tuesday, September 1 2020 
		@incomplete
			@: task3
			@: task4
		@complete
			@: task1
			@: task2

Reading:

from dmark import Dmark

dm = Dmark("todo.dm")

dm.value["completed"]                       == 278
dm.value["days"][0]["date"]                 == "Tuesday, September 1 2020"
dm.value["days"][0]["incomplete"][0]        == "task3"

Write 1:

today = dm.value["days"][0]
today["complete"].append(today["incomplete"].pop())
dm.value["completed"] += 1
dm.write()

Out 1:

...
Stats:
@completed: 279
...
@days
	@
		@date: Tuesday, September 1 2020 
		@incomplete
			@: task3
		@complete
			@: task1
			@: task2
			@: task4
...

Write 2:

dm.value["days"].insert(0, {date: todaystring, incomplete: [], complete: []})
dm.value["days"][0]["incomplete"].extend(dm.value["days"][1]["incomplete"])
dm.value["days"][1]["incomplete"] = []
dm.write()

Out 2:

...
@days
	@
		@date: Wednesday, September 2 2020 
		@incomplete
			@: task3
			@: task4
		@complete
	@
		@date: Tuesday, September 1 2020 
		@incomplete
		@complete
			@: task1
			@: task2
...