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• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration
  • Adding a title
  • Sequencing
  • Conditions
  • Actions
• Custom Processors
• Tips
• Testing
  • From the command line
  • Changelog

Marked Conductor

A “train conductor” for Marked 2. Conductor can be set up as a Custom Preprocessor or Custom Processor for Marked, and can run different commands and scripts based on conditions in a YAML configuration file, allowing you to have multiple processors that run based on predicates.

Installation

$ gem install marked-conductor

If you run into errors, try running with the --user-install flag:

$ gem install --user-install marked-conductor

I’ve noticed lately with asdf that I have to run asdf reshim after installing gems containing binaries.

If you use Homebrew, you can run

$ brew gem install marked-conductor

Usage

To use Conductor, you need to set up a configuration file in ~/.config/conductor/tracks.yaml. Run conductor once to create the directory and an empty configuration. See Configuration below for details on setting up your “tracks.”

Once configured, you can set up conductor as a Custom Processor in Marked. Run which conductor | pbcopy to get the full path to the binary and copy it, then open Marked Preferences > Advanced and select either Custom Processor or Custom Preprocessor (or both) and paste into the Path: field. You can select Automatically enable for new windows to have the processor enabled by default when opening documents.

Conductor requires that it be run from Marked 2, and won’t function on the command line. This is because Marked defines special environment variables that can be used in scripts, and these won’t exist when running from your shell. If you want to be able to test Conductor from the command line, see Testing.

Configuration

Configuration is done in a YAML file located at ~/.config/conductor/tracks.yaml. Run conductor from the command line to generate the necessary directories and sample config file if it doesn’t already exist.

The top level key in the YAML file is tracks:. This is an array of hashes, each hash containing a condition and either a script or command key.

A simple config would look like:

tracks:
  - condition: yaml includes comments
    script: blog-processor
  - condition: any
    command: echo 'NOCUSTOM'

This would run a script at ~/.config/conductor/scripts/blog-processor if there was YAML present in the document and it included a key called comments. If not, the condition: any would echo NOCUSTOM to Marked, indicating it should skip any Custom Processor. If no condition is met, NOCUSTOM is automatically sent, so this particular example is redundant. In practice you would include a catchall processor to act as the default if no prior conditions were met.

Instead of a script or command, a track can contain another tracks key, in which case the parent condition will branch and it will cycle through the tracks contained in the tracks key for the hash. tracks keys can be repeatedly nested to create AND conditions.

For example, the following functions the same as condition: phase is pre AND tree contains .obsidian AND (extension is md or extension is markdown):

tracks:
  - condition: phase is pre
    tracks:
    - condition: tree contains .obsidian
      tracks:
      - condition: extension is md
        command: obsidian-md-filter
      - condition: extension is markdown
        command: obsidian-md-filter

Adding a title

Tracks can contain a title key. This is only used in the STDERR output of the track, where ‘Met condition: …’ is shown for debugging. If a title is not present, the condition itself will be shown for debugging. If a title is defined, it replaces the condition in the STDERR output. This is mostly for shortening long condition strings to something more meaningful for debugging.

Sequencing

A track can also contain a sequence of scripts and/or commands. STDIN will be passed into the first script/command, then the STDOUT of that will be piped to the next script/command. To do this, add a key called sequence that contains an array of scripts and commands:

tracks:
  - condition: phase is pro AND path contains README.md
    sequence:
      - script: strip_emoji
      - command: rdiscount

A sequence can not contain nested tracks.

By default, processing stops when a condition is met. If you want to continue processing after a condition is successful, add the continue: true to the track. This will only apply to tracks containing this key, and processing will stop when it gets to a successful condition that doesn’t contain the continue key (or reaches the end of the tracks without another match).

Conditions

Available conditions are:

• extension (or ext): This will test the extension of the file, e.g. ext is md or ext contains task
• tree contains ...: This will test whether a given file or directory exists in any of the parent folders of the current file, starting with the current directory of the file. Example: tree contains .obsidian would test whether there was an .obsidian directory in any of the directories above the file (indicating it’s within an Obsidian vault)
• path: This tests just the path to the file itself, allowing conditions like path contains _drafts or path does not contain _posts.
• filename: Tests only the filename, can be any string comparison (starts with, is, contains, etc.).
• phase: Tests whether Marked is in Preprocessor or Processor phase, allowing conditions like phase is preprocess or phase is process (which can be shortened to pre and pro).
• text: This tests for any string match within the text of the document being processed. This can be used with operators starts with, ends with, or contains, e.g. text contains @taskpaper or text does not contain <!--more-->.
  • If the test value is surrounded by forward slashes, it will be treated as a regular expression. Regexes are always flagged as case insensitive. Use it like text contains /@\w+/.
• yaml, headers, or frontmatter will test for YAML headers. If a yaml:KEY is defined, a specific YAML key will be tested for. If a value is defined with an operator, it will be tested against the value key.
  • yaml tests for the presence of YAML frontmatter.
  • yaml:comments tests for the presence of a comments key.
  • yaml:comments is true tests whether comments: true exists.
  • yaml:tags contains appreview will test whether the tags array contains appreview.
  • If the YAML key is a date, it can be tested against with before, after, and is, and the value can be a natural language date, e.g. yaml:date is after may 3, 2024
  • If both the YAML key value and the test value are numbers, you can use operators greater than (>), less than (<), equal/is (=/==), and is not equal/not equals (!=/!==). Numbers will be interpreted as floats.
  • If the YAML value is a boolean, you can test with is true or is not true (or is false)
• mmd or meta will test for MultiMarkdown metadata using the same formatting as yaml above.
• The following keywords act as a catchall and can be used as the last track in the config to act on any documents that aren’t matched by preceding rules:
  • any
  • else
  • all
  • true
  • catchall

Available comparison operators are:

• is or equals (negate with is not or does not equal) tests for equality on strings, numbers, or dates
• contains or includes (negate with does not contain) tests on strings or array values
• begins with (or starts with) or ends with (negate with does not begin with) tests on strings
• greater than or less than (tests on numbers or dates)

Conditions can be combined with AND or OR (must be uppercase) and simple parenthetical operations will work (parenthesis can not be nested). A boolean condition would look like path contains _posts AND extension is md or (tree includes .obsidian AND extension is todo) OR extension is taskpaper.

Actions

The action can be either script or command.

Scripts are located in ~/.config/conductor/scripts/ and should be executable files that take input on STDIN (unless $file is specified in the script definition). If a script is defined starting with ~ or /, that will be interpreted as a full path to an alternate location.

Commands are interpreted as shell commands. If a command exists in the $PATH, a full path will automatically be determined, so a command can be as simple as just pandoc. Add any arguments needed after the command.

Using $file as an argument to a script or command will bypass processing of STDIN input, and instead use the value of $MARKED_PATH to read the contents of the specified file.

Custom Processors

All of the capabilities and requirements of a Custom Processor script or command still apply, and all of the environment variables that Marked sets are still available. You just no longer have to have one huge script that forks on the various environment variables and you don’t have to write your own tests for handling different scenarios.

A script run by Conductor already knows it has the right type of file with the expected data and path, so your script can focus on just processing one file type. It’s recommended to separate all of that logic you may already have written out into separate scripts and let Conductor handle the forking based on various criteria.

Custom processors must wait for input on STDIN. Most markdown CLIs will do this automatically, but scripts should include a call to read STDIN. This will pause the script and wait for the data to be sent. Without this, Marked will launch the script, and if it closes the pipe, it will try to write data to a closed pipe and crash immediately. This is a very difficult error to trap in Marked, so it’s crucial that all scripts keep the STDIN pipe open.

Tips

• Config file must be valid YAML. Any value containing colons, brackets, or other special characters should be quoted, e.g. (condition: "text contains my:text")
• You can see what condition matched in Marked by opening Help->Show Custom Processor Log and checking the STDERR output.
• To run a custom processor for Bear, use the condition "text contains <!-- source: bear.app -->"
• To run a custom processor for Obsidian, use the condition tree contains .obsidian

Testing

You can test conductor setups using Marked’s Help->Show Custom Processor Log, or by running from the command line. The easiest way to test conditions is to set the track’s command to echo "meaningful definition" and see what conditions are met when conductor is run.

In Marked’s Custom Processor Log, you can see both the STDOUT output and the STDERR messages. When running Conductor, the STDERR output will show what conditions were met (as well as any errors reported).

From the command line

In order to test from the command line, you’ll need certain environment variables set. This can be done by exporting the following variables with your own definitions, or by running conductor with all of the variables preceding the command, e.g. $ MARKED_ORIGIN=/path/to/markdown_file.md [...] conductor.

The following need to be defined. Some can be left as empty or to defaults, such as MARKED_INCLUDES and MARKED_OUTLINE, but all need to be set to something.

HOME=$HOME
MARKED_CSS_PATH="" # The path to CSS, can be empty
MARKED_EXT="md" # The extension of the current file in Marked, set as needed for testing
MARKED_INCLUDES="" # Files included in the document, can be empty
MARKED_ORIGIN="/Users/ttscoff/notes/" # Base directory for the file being tested
MARKED_PATH="/Users/ttscoff/notes/markdown_file.md" # Full path to Markdown file
MARKED_PHASE="PREPROCESS" # either "PROCESS" or "PREPROCESS"
OUTLINE="none" # Outline mode, can be "none"
PATH=$PATH # The system $PATH variable

Further, input on STDIN is required, unless the script/command being matched contains $file, in which case $MARKED_PATH will be read and operated on. For the purpose of testing, you can use echo or cat FILE and pipe to conductor, e.g. echo "TESTING" | conductor.

To test which conditions are being met, you can just set the command: for a track to echo "meaningful message", where the message is something that indicates which condition(s) have passed.

Changelog

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