Strip out RedCloth markup?

Ruby Apps Redcloth
1

Is there a way in RedCloth to go from text with Textile markup in it to
plain text without the markup? Not just 

 or  that passes

it through, but actually strips out the textile markup glyphs so

something like

word


ends up just being


word


in the output?


thanks.
2

No, not currently. You could write a plain text formatter like the
HTML formatter in (the forthcoming) RedCloth 4.0. Then you rewrite
the methods so it passes through the text you want but doesn’t add HTML.

If you want to hack on it, fork the project on github and let me know
when you have something interesting.

Out of curiousity, what are you using this for?

3

The site I’m working on has a batch email function and I’d like the user
to be able to user Textile for creating their HTML formatted email.
However, I’ve set up action mailer to do multipart emails in case
recipient is on a plain text client. So, for the HTML mailer template I
use the .to_html output for the body text, and for the plain text mailer
template I want to strip out the markup.

Right now I’m just sending through the marked up text, which isn’t
horrible if you keep it simple, but links, for instance, really come
through badly.

Thanks for the input.

4

Okay, that’s what I suspected. I have had that need at times too.
Maybe it would be nice, instead of just outputting the text with no
formatting, to do a little plain text formatting exclusively for
human consumption (unlike Textile or Markdown). Like:

Header 1

This is a link (http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/redcloth) and
perhaps some bold text.

Now, you specifically didn’t want the asterisks around bold
phrases, didn’t you? What do you think?

5

Exactly. See the LaTeX formatter someone added and do likewise.

6

Jason G. wrote:

Exactly. See the LaTeX formatter someone added and do likewise.

Coolio - will start working on that. Thanks for your help.

7

Not so much I didn’t want the asterisks, but client does not like the
output that way.

I think I see what you’re getting at, though - would this be a matter of
setting up custom RedCloth rules to apply the “plain text” formatting
they want to end up with, and then perhaps a custom method to apply
those rules instead of the normal ones, such as “.to_plain_formatted”?

8

Excuses, excuses, where’s that box of excuses I keep around here
somewhere…

No, I haven’t. The particular client I was working with when I posted
the question decided to go with plain text for their email function. The
project for me to work on that formatter subsequently got moved to the
back-burner behind some higher priority work. I still have aims to do
it, because I know it’ll be needed in the future - I’ll notify on this
thread when I get there.

Jason G. wrote:

Cayce, any luck building that plain text formatter? I’ve got a
“base” module that the other formatters build off of, but I’m
thinking, “Hey, why not let them build off of a plain text formatter?”

9

Cayce, any luck building that plain text formatter? I’ve got a
“base” module that the other formatters build off of, but I’m
thinking, “Hey, why not let them build off of a plain text formatter?”