Quick, Mark that Down!

The first thing that comes to your mind after hearing markup is either HTML, or Markdown. As of 0.8, Farben now supports partial opt-in Markdown!

To turn the feature on, literally turn the feature on. Insert this in your dependency:

farben = { version = "0.8", features = ["markdown"] }

Or while adding as a dependency:

cargo add farben --features markdown

INFO

Markdown support is limited to inline spans only. Supported syntax: **bold**, *italic*, _this type of italic_, __underline__ (not officially standard, but why not?), ~~strikethrough~~, and `inline code`. Block-level elements like headings and lists are not supported.

Even with this, Farben's markdown fully supports nesting. So **I'm bold *and italic*, heck yeah!** works nicely.

Using Markdown

Farben has a handful of functions and macros for markdown, mirroring the existing color API:

use farben::*;

let bold = markdown("**bold**");
let formatted = md_fmt!("**{}** is the answer", 42); // Bold "42 is the answer"
mdprintln!("Directly print like you're *italic* or __underlined__.");
mdprint!("`mdprint!()` itself, inline coded.");

Heil Compilers!

If you want zero runtime overhead, swap the markdown feature for markdown-compile:

farben = { version = "0.8", features = ["markdown-compile"] }

This enables both markdown and compile at once. Static strings are processed entirely at compile time and baked into your binary as plain ANSI strings, no parsing happens at runtime.

INFO

The changes to markdown-compile is that the markdown() function becomes a macro: markdown!(). The rest stays the same.

use farben::*;

// Rendered at compile time — zero runtime cost
mdprintln!("**bold** and *italic*");

// Format args fall back to runtime automatically
let name = "world";
mdprintln!("**hello {}**", name);

TIP

markdown-compile is a strict superset of markdown -- you don't need to enable both. Enabling markdown-compile is enough. Glory to Compilers!