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text/gemini to HTML with AWK

Fun with AWK and text/gemini

Written while listening to “Venice Queen” by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Published: 2020-12-29

Tagged with:

#awk

#gemini

#git

I like text/gemini. I like writing in this format. At first, it was a bit limitating, like, I want *bold*, /italic/, _underline_, ~striked~, [inline links](…), ![inline images](…), !![inline videos](…) (?) etc. But I as started writing (by the way, every post in the last 3 months was written in text/gemini) I found myself pretty accustomed to it. I really like the idea of one link-per-line.

I also started writing text/gemini outside this blog. The INSTALL file for gmid is written in text/gemini. The README for tango (a new hack, will write about that later) is also written in text/gemini.

gmid repository

tango repository

(they’re only gemini-related things, so using text/gemini for documentational/presentational purpose seems appropriate.)

I also have a public (HTTP-only for the time being) git repository, powered by cgit.

If you sum this two things, you’ll reach the logical conclusion that I need a filter for cgit to display text/gemini over HTTP.

Cgit has this cool things called filters: you can write script (or any executable really) that accept input in a particular format and output HTML and cgit will use it to render pages.

There are a few text/gemini to HTML converters, but I rolled my own. NIH. Well, not really. I currently run cgit on a FreeBSD jail, and I don’t like the idea of installing too much things inside it. I could have built a (say) go executable linked statically and copied into the jail, but I don’t really like the idea.

Instead, I wrote an AWK script to convert text/gemini files to HTML. I was kinda surprised that nobody had already written one in AWK (or Perl). It isn’t too ugly, and was an chance to review the language.

AWK is, in my opinion, an almost perfect scripting language. It is quick, easy to learn and to use (both as a filter in pipe and as a standalone script) and packed with nice and essential features. But it lacks something. I don’t know exactly what, but every time I use it (for more than a one-liner) I get the impression that something is missing.

Anyway, here’s the script in all its glory. This time I discovered the “next” statement, that unfortunately cannot be used inside a function (probably for a good reason).

(it’s open to improvements, but at the moment I’m happy with it)

EDIT 2021/02/03: after seeing another decoder, I took some time to refactor the original converter. I reordered the matches so the pre handling is before everything else.

dracometallium’ gmi2html.awk

#!/usr/bin/awk -f

BEGIN {
	in_pre = 0;
	in_list = 0;
}

!in_pre && /^```/ {
	in_pre = 1;
	if (in_list) {
		in_list = 0;
		print("</ul>");
	}
	print "<pre>";
	next
}
in_pre && /^```/	{ in_pre = 0; print "</pre>"; next }
in_pre			{ print san($0); next }

/^###/	{ output("<h3>", substr($0, 4), "</h3>"); next }
/^##/	{ output("<h2>", substr($0, 3), "</h2>"); next }
/^#/	{ output("<h1>", substr($0, 2), "</h1>"); next }
/^>/	{ output("<blockquote>", substr($0, 2), "</blockquote>"); next }
/^\*/	{ output("<li>", substr($0, 2), "</li>"); next }

/^=>/   {
	$0 = substr($0, 3);
	link = $1;
	$1 = "";
	output_link(link, $0);
	next;
}

//	{ output("<p>", $0, "</p>"); next }

END {
	if (in_list)
		print "</ul>"
	if (in_pre)
		print "</pre>"
}

function trim(s) {
	sub("^[ \t]*", "", s);
	return s;
}

function san(s) {
	gsub("&", "\\&amp;", s)
	gsub("<", "\\&lt;", s)
	gsub(">", "\\&gt;", s)
	return s;
}

function output(ot, content, ct) {
	content = trim(content);

	if (!in_list && ot == "<li>") {
		in_list = 1;
		print "<ul>";
	}

	if (in_list && ot != "<li>") {
		in_list = 0;
		print "</ul>";
	}

	if (ot == "<p>" && content == "")
		return;

	printf("%s%s%s\n", ot, san(content), ct);
}

function output_link(link, content) {
	if (in_list) {
		in_list = 0;
		print "</ul>";
	}

	if (content == "")
		content = link;

	printf("<p><a href=\"%s\">%s</a></p>\n", link, trim(san(content)));
}

Cheers!

-- text: CC0 1.0; code: public domain (unless specified otherwise). No copyright here.