Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team • Hacker News Board

Re: Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team

#61

Post by kurayashi » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

sureglymop wrote: post #44

perpil wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its predecessor (mkdocs material) supported blogs via a plugin and rss feeds via a mkdocs plugin ( https://guts.github.io/mkdocs-rss-plugin/ ). I don't believe it supports blogs yet according to this: https://zensical.org/compatibility/#phased-transition-strate... but will in the next phase when it supports plugins. It doesn't support loading content from a database that I'm aware of, it uses markdown files on disk a…

Thanks for the information. If files on disk are a requirement that would be a shame. Such tools keep abstracting such that one can generate a plethora of output formats but don't abstract the input in such a way that one could programmatically add content. Even though that wouldn't stand in the way of using the filesystem as the source regardless.

It’s a requirement for now. But once the module system is in its possible to add other data sources.

Re: Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team

#62

Post by tapirl » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

finallyspeaking wrote: post #43

I’m delighted to see this project evolving and look forward to following its development! I’ve used just about every markup technology over my (many) years as a tech writer, from troff macros, to SGML/DocBook and then XML/DITA, and finally, to Markup with the Material for MkDocs project, as a sponsor. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but for enabling contributors outside the tech writing community, simpler sour…

There's a newcomer, TapirMD, in case you're interested: https://tmd.tapirgames.com/index.html

It hasn't reached its v0.1.0 milestone yet, but soon.

Re: Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team

#63

Post by finallyspeaking » Wed, Nov 12, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

tapirl wrote: post #62

finallyspeaking wrote: post #43

I’m delighted to see this project evolving and look forward to following its development! I’ve used just about every markup technology over my (many) years as a tech writer, from troff macros, to SGML/DocBook and then XML/DITA, and finally, to Markup with the Material for MkDocs project, as a sponsor. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but for enabling contributors outside the tech writing community, simpler sour…

There's a newcomer, TapirMD, in case you're interested: https://tmd.tapirgames.com/index.html It hasn't reached its v0.1.0 milestone yet, but soon.

Laudable, but I don't think TapirMD will gain much traction.

First, your landing page doesn't describe how TapirMD fits into the Markdown universe. I just see a list of features. Why should I read the list? Ah, the spec page[0] has some info, but it should really be on the landing page.

Second, and more importantly, TapirMD is not a superset of CommonMark[1]. GitHub had its own flavor of MD, but it's been some years now since they migrated to a CommonMark base plus extensions[2].

I recommend looking more closely at the CommonMark universe and innovating there.

[0] https://tmd.tapirgames.com/specification.html [1] https://commonmark.org/ [2] https://github.github.com/gfm/

Re: Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team

#64

Post by tapirl » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 3:03 AM UTC

finallyspeaking wrote: post #63

tapirl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a newcomer, TapirMD, in case you're interested: https://tmd.tapirgames.com/index.html It hasn't reached its v0.1.0 milestone yet, but soon.

Laudable, but I don't think TapirMD will gain much traction. First, your landing page doesn't describe how TapirMD fits into the Markdown universe. I just see a list of features. Why should I read the list? Ah, the spec page[0] has some info, but it should really be on the landing page. Second, and more importantly, TapirMD is not a superset of CommonMark[1]. GitHub had its own flavor of MD, but it's been some years…

Thank you very much for your feedback. I truly appreciate it.

TapirMD is not a superset of Markdown or CommonMark. It simply inherits some of its DNA from Markdown. While Markdown is very simple, it is also highly underspecified and syntactic inconsistent. CommonMark improves on it slightly, but not fundamentally. Moreover, basic Markdown lacks many essential features that web content writers need.

Yes, none of these factors prevent it from being adopted widely. But for me, the limited feature set is the real blocker. I don’t want to rely on a patchwork of extensions and third-party tools.

TapirMD (where MD stands for `markup doc`) aims to address these shortcomings. It is a new language, deliberately not compatible with Markdown, and never intended to fit within the Markdown ecosystem. Its official toolchain is designed to empower web content writers to create rich, feature-complete articles without relying on any third-party tools.

The spec is too long to serve as a landing page. Maybe a concise demo showcasing sample code on the leading page would be great. Thank you again for the constructive criticism.

TapirMD was primarily developed for my own needs as a technical writer, to produce content for my websites (see the .tmd soruce of my articles: https://tmd.tapirgames.com/use-cases.html). Markdown simply felt too limiting. I've been using TapirMD for over a year now and am quite satisfied with it. I'd be delighted if it proves helpful to other writers as well.