new post

blog/annoucement-showdown-2.0.md

@@ -60,6 +60,5 @@ development efforts will be put into it.
 This means **Showdown 1.x will now enter maintenance mode, that is, no new features
 will be added** and only important bugfixes will be committed.
 
-We expect to release a stable version of Showdown 2.0 somewhere around June 2018,
-but an alpha-version might be released a lot sooner. ***So, if you are as excited as
-we are, stay tuned for more information***.
+We expect to release an alpha version of Showdown 2.0 somewhere around ~~August 2018,~~
+the fall of 2018. ***So, if you are as excited as we are, stay tuned for more information***.

blog/posts.json

@@ -12,5 +12,33 @@
       "image": "blog/img/2017.12.12.jpg",
       "summary": "Showdown version 1.0.0 was released almost 3 years ago, back in May 2015. Since then, it has seen a lot of improvements, with a boost to performance and a significant number of features now included in the core of the library. However, do to backwards compatibility constrains, we are still supporting a lot of legacy features, that prevent us from moving the software forward.\n\nWith that in mind, **it is time to start thinking about Showdown version 2.0.** For the next major release of Showdown we have planned a range of **significant changes and additions**."
     }
+  },
+  {
+    "id": 2,
+    "canonical": "rewriting-the-parser-challenges-and-opportunities",
+    "url": "blog/rewriting-the-parser-challenges-and-opportunities.md",
+    "metadata": {
+      "title": "Rewriting the parser: Challenges and opportunities",
+      "author": "Estevão Soares dos Santos",
+      "author_avatar": "img/avatars/tivie.jpg",
+      "date": "2018-09-25",
+      "language": "en",
+      "image": "blog/img/2018.09.25.jpg",
+      "summary": "There comes a time when tough (and exciting) choices need to be made. With a version 2.0 in the oven (and the exciting reverse parser already completed), it seemed an excellent opportunity for doing something that I wished for a long time: rewriting showdown's parser from scratch. But maybe that challenge was a lot more tough than I first anticipated!"
+    }
+  },
+  {
+    "id": 3,
+    "canonical": "showdown-1.8.7-released",
+    "url": "blog/showdown-1.8.7-released.md",
+    "metadata": {
+      "title": "Showdown 1.8.7 released",
+      "author": "Estevão Soares dos Santos",
+      "author_avatar": "img/avatars/tivie.jpg",
+      "date": "2018-10-16",
+      "language": "en",
+      "image": "blog/img/2018.10.06.jpg",
+      "summary": "While everyone's waiting for the new Showdown 2.0, we released version 1.8.7 with some improvements and several bugfixes"
+    }
   }
 ]

blog/rewriting-the-parser-challenges-and-opportunities.md

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+«««
+title: Rewriting the parser: Challenges and opportunities,
+author: Estevão Soares dos Santos,
+author_avatar: img/avatars/tivie.jpg,
+date: 2018-09-25,
+language: en,
+image: img/blog/2018.09.25.jpg,
+summary: There comes a time when tough (and exciting) choices need to be made. With a version 2.0 in the oven 
+    (and the exciting reverse parser already completed), it seemed an excellent opportunity for doing something 
+    that I wished for a long time: rewriting showdown's parser from scratch. But maybe that challenge was a lot 
+    more tough than I first anticipated!
+»»»
+
+There comes a time when tough (and exciting) choices need to be made. With a version 2.0 in the oven 
+(and the exciting reverse parser already completed), it seemed an excellent opportunity for doing something that 
+I wished for a long time: rewriting showdown's parser from scratch. 
+
+But maybe that challenge was a lot more tough than I first anticipated!
+
+## The old parser
+
+The old parser was based on replacing markdown text with HTML, through a series of Regular Expression in loco replaces.
+While this was true to showdown's origins in Markdown.pl from John Gruber, during the last 3 years it became clear that
+Regex (at least alone) was not suitable for the job.
+
+Don't get me wrong, Regex is a great tool: *not only it works for 99% of use cases* but also makes it extremely easy,
+to develop extensions that complement showdown's features, even for beginner programmers.
+
+The problem, however, are those pesky edge cases... that 1% of of weird scenarios that made the Regular Expressions
+increasingly complex over the time and forced me to make more and more exceptions to the rule.
+
+In fact, when you compare v 1.0 to v. 1.8.6, it's plain to see that almost all bug fixes (with notable exceptions)
+were, in fact, edge case fixes.
+
+## Regex Madness
+
+Some regexes grew so weirdly that I need to split them in chunks and do some convoluted stuff to keep sanity.
+
+```javascript
+  if (options.literalMidWordUnderscores) {
+    text = text.replace(/\b___(\S[\s\S]*)___\b/g, function (wm, txt) {
+      return parseInside (txt, '<strong><em>', '</em></strong>');
+    });
+    text = text.replace(/\b__(\S[\s\S]*)__\b/g, function (wm, txt) {
+      return parseInside (txt, '<strong>', '</strong>');
+    });
+    text = text.replace(/\b_(\S[\s\S]*?)_\b/g, function (wm, txt) {
+      return parseInside (txt, '<em>', '</em>');
+    });
+  } else {
+    text = text.replace(/___(\S[\s\S]*?)___/g, function (wm, m) {
+      return (/\S$/.test(m)) ? parseInside (m, '<strong><em>', '</em></strong>') : wm;
+    });
+    text = text.replace(/__(\S[\s\S]*?)__/g, function (wm, m) {
+      return (/\S$/.test(m)) ? parseInside (m, '<strong>', '</strong>') : wm;
+    });
+    text = text.replace(/_([^\s_][\s\S]*?)_/g, function (wm, m) {
+      // !/^_[^_]/.test(m) - test if it doesn't start with __ (since it seems redundant, we removed it)
+      return (/\S$/.test(m)) ? parseInside (m, '<em>', '</em>') : wm;
+    });
+  }
+```
+
+Others, which were inherited from when I took over the project, were just plainly poorly coded and 
+[hid some nasty bugs within](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/150277/regex-to-parse-horizontal-rules-in-markdown).
+
+Javascript's regex limitations (such as no support for Lookbehind or atomic and possessive grouping) meant that I needed to rely
+on the language's quirks and look for hacks to overcome those limitations.
+At some point I even had to adapt a [recursive RegExp extension](https://github.com/showdownjs/showdown/blob/version_1.x/src/helpers.js#L210)
+so HTML parsing was not as painful and slow as it was.
+
+
+## Enter the new parser
+
+For all those reasons, and some more, I felt that version 2.0 should have a shinny and **proper new parser** that relied 
+on sequentiality and code logic rather than in place substitutions. But to move successfully away from RexExp, 3 things were needed:
+
+1. Keep the extension logic simple (while making it more powerful)
+2. Time
+3. Accurately estimate number 2 (time needed vs free time)
+
+
+While I feel that the first one is being accomplished quite nicely (if I may say so myself), I might have over estimated
+my free time and I definitely failed at number 3. Which meant I had to keep pushing the alpha release since August.
+
+Between work and family, the little free time I get, I dedicate it to this library. I do feel that things 
+are still going on the right track, albeit a lot more slowly than expected (and than I wished for).
+
+Regardless, **I'm really excited about the new features for version 2.0, specially the reverse converter and how it will tie in 
+toegether with the new parser and event system** 
+
+
+## I would really, really, really appreciate if you could donate, you know?
+
+As you know, ShowdownJS is a free library and it will remain free forever.
+However, maintaining and improving the library costs time and money.
+
+So... if you like my work and find our library useful, 
+please donate ~~[through Patreon (coming soon)](https://www.patreon.com/showdownjs) or~~ 
+directly [through paypal](https://www.paypal.me/tiviesantos)!! 
+
+Your contribution will mean a lot to me and really help me dedicate less time to my dayjob (and those annoying extra hours) 
+and more time developing this (awesome) library. Thank you!!!

blog/showdown-1.8.7-released.md

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+«««
+title: Showdown 1.8.7 released,
+author: Estevão Soares dos Santos,
+author_avatar: img/avatars/tivie.jpg,
+date: 2018-10-16,
+language: en,
+image: img/blog/2018.10.06.jpg,
+summary: While everyone's waiting for the new Showdown 2.0, I released version 1.8.7 with some improvements and several bugfixes.
+»»»
+
+Showdown's version 2.0 is coming together although not as fast as I wanted, maybe 
+[due to the extensive refactor done to the parser][rewriting-the-parser]. But while the community is patiently  waiting, 
+I felt that some important bugfixes could (and should) be backported to v 1.x.
+
+
+## What's new in 1.8.7?
+
+Some long awaited bugfixes were backported, namely:
+
+
+* **emojis:** fix emoji excessive size
+
+* **gfm-codeblocks:**
+
+    * add support for spaces before language declaration
+    
+    * leading space no longer breaks gfm codeblocks
+    
+* **images:** fix js error when using image references
+
+* **literalMidWordAsterisks:** now parses single characters enclosed by * correctly
+
+* **mentions:** allow for usernames with dot, underscore and dash
+
+* **nbsp:** fix replacing of nbsp with regular spaces
+
+
+
+You can download/use the new version from [github], [npm] and [CDNJS].
+
+
+[rewriting-the-parser]: http://shwodownjs.com/#!/blog/rewriting-the-parser-challenge-or-opportunity
+[npm]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/showdown
+[github]: https://github.com/showdownjs/showdown
+[CDNJS]: https://cdnjs.com/libraries/showdown

sitemap.xml

@@ -25,4 +25,12 @@
   <loc>http://showdownjs.com/#!/blog/annoucement-showdown-2.0</loc>
   <lastmod>2017-12-14T12:46:23+00:00</lastmod>
 </url>
-</urlset>
+<url>
+  <loc>http://showdownjs.com/#!/blog/rewriting-the-parser-challenges-and-apportunities</loc>
+  <lastmod>2018-09-25T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
+</url>
+<url>
+  <loc>http://showdownjs.com/#!/blog/showdown-1.8.7-released</loc>
+  <lastmod>2018-10-17T00:18:00+00:00</lastmod>
+</url>
+</urlset>