Inline Syntax

Write *bold*, _underline_, `code`, ~strikethrough~, and /italic/ directly inside your Farben markup strings. No extra functions, no separate macros. Just enable the inline feature and the c* family handles it transparently.

[dependencies]
farben = { version = "...", features = ["inline"] }

Or:

cargo add farben --features inline

How It Works

The inline feature runs a pre-processing pass before tokenization. Shorthand delimiters are converted into their corresponding Farben tags, then parsed and rendered normally. This means every macro in the c* family supports inline syntax automatically: cprintln!, cprint!, cformat!, cwrite!, and all their stderr and bleed variants.

Supported Syntax

Delimiter	Produces	Example
*text*	Bold	*important*
_text_	Underline	_underlined_
`text`	Code (bright white on dark grey)	`fn main()`
~text~	Strikethrough	~deprecated~
/text/	Italic	/emphasis/

Examples

use farben::prelude::*;

cprintln!("This is *bold* and this is /italic/.");
cprintln!("You can _underline_ or ~strikethrough~ text.");
cprintln!("Use `inline code` for monospace snippets.");

All of this works with format arguments too:

use farben::prelude::*;

let name = "Farben";
cprintln!("Welcome to *{name}*!");

Nesting

Inline syntax can be nested inside each other:

use farben::prelude::*;

cprintln!("*Bold text with /italic inside/*");
cprintln!("`code with *bold* inside`");

Double Characters

To write a literal double character like ** or __ without triggering formatting, just type them as-is. The preprocessor treats doubled delimiters as escaped literals:

use farben::prelude::*;

cprintln!("This is not **bold**, just two asterisks.");
cprintln!("This is not __underlined__, just two underscores.");

Inside Tags

Inline delimiters inside [...] brackets are passed through untouched. This means you can use *, _, `, ~, and / inside tag content without escaping:

use farben::prelude::*;

// The * inside [bg:red] is treated as a literal, not bold
cprintln!("[bg:red fg:white]*not bold*");

Unclosed Delimiters

If a delimiter is opened but never closed, it is rendered as literal text rather than causing an error:

use farben::prelude::*;

cprintln!("This *is not closed"); // prints literally

Replaces the markdown Feature

The inline feature is the replacement for the deprecated markdown and markdown-compile features. Unlike markdown, which required dedicated mdprint!/mdprintln!/md_fmt! macros, inline integrates directly into the existing c* macro family. No extra learning, no extra imports, no separate feature for compile-time processing.

// Old way (deprecated):
// mdprintln!("**bold** and *italic*");

// New way:
cprintln!("*bold* and /italic/");

If you were using markdown-compile, the inline feature works with the compile feature too:

[dependencies]
farben = { version = "...", features = ["inline", "compile"] }

use farben::prelude::*;

// Compile-time validated, inline syntax supported
cprintln!("*bold* and /italic/ and `code`");