Getting started

Updated Nov 1, 2026

Install

cargo add textlane

The crate needs Rust 1.88 or later. Each domain is a feature, all on by default: md, html, highlight (html.highlight and its grammars), katex (html.katex and KaTeX's font metrics), mdx and nl. Leave out what you do not use to build faster:

cargo add textlane --no-default-features --features md,html

A first pipeline

A pipeline parses text into a tree, runs plugins over it and serializes the result. Each plugin is a struct in its domain's module, textlane::md, textlane::html, textlane::mdx and textlane::nl, and its options are the struct's fields.

use textlane::{Processor, html, md};

let processor = Processor::new()
    .with(md::Parse::default())
    .with(md::ToHtml::default())
    .with(html::Stringify::default())
    .freeze()?;
let output = processor.process("# Hello *world*")?;
output.value
// <h1>Hello <em>world</em></h1>

md::Parse reads Markdown into mdast, md::ToHtml turns it into hast and html::Stringify writes HTML. freeze checks that each stage takes the tree the one before returns, and the frozen processor then handles any number of documents.

Adding syntax

Syntax extensions sit beside the parser. Add md::Gfm for tables, task lists, strikethrough and autolinks, md::CjkFriendly for emphasis next to Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, and md::Frontmatter to read a YAML block at the top:

use textlane::{Processor, html, md};

let output = Processor::new()
    .with(md::Parse::default())
    .with(md::Gfm::default())
    .with(md::Frontmatter::default())
    .with(md::ToHtml::default())
    .with(html::Stringify::default())
    .freeze()?
    .process("---\ntitle: Notes\n---\n\n~~draft~~ done")?;
output.value
// <p><del>draft</del> done</p>

Reading the result

process returns an Output: the text as value and the file, which holds the messages plugins reported. Checks such as nl::RepeatedWords leave the text alone and report a message:

use textlane::{Processor, md, nl};

let output = Processor::new()
    .with(md::Parse::default())
    .with(md::ToNaturalLanguage::default())
    .with(nl::RepeatedWords)
    .with(nl::Stringify)
    .freeze()?
    .process("It is the the best.")?;
output.file.messages[0].reason
// Unexpected repeated `the`, remove one occurrence

Next, the processor covers every method, and the plugin pages list each plugin with its options.