Contra

The Contra utility converts the so called C Style Markup Language to HTML/XML and back.

Rationale

Contra removes visual clutter from HTML/XML and makes editing the markup easier, especially for people with a background in C style languages (including Javascript).

The preference for this kind of syntax can be observed else where too. QML and the Groovy XmlTemplateEngine markup syntaxes are similar and served as inspiration for Contra. However, they require altering your tech stack. Contra can be used seamlessly with your web projects, since it can dynamically convert within your editor.

Example

If someone is used to writing *script, this should be more comfortable to type out:

p {
    foo br;
    bar br;
}

And press Alt + Shift + C (in VScode), then to type out this with:

<p>
    foo <br/>
    bar <br/>
</p>

Yet, the two are equivalent using Contra.

Notes

The Contra utility itself is meant to serve as a backbone for other tools, such as text editor or IDE extensions.

More documentation is available at documentation/*.

Installantion

For any of the below plugins to work, the Contra executable will have to be installed on your system.

Build from source

Contra is written in C++, it must be compiled.

Make sure you have the following compile time dependencies:

• a C++ compiler (e.g. g++)
• Make (e.g. GNU Make)
• Flex

After navigating to the root directory, run:

$ make

This will result in a new executable file called contra, place it in your $PATH. The easiest way to do so is by running:

$ make install

Vim

Place the file "plugin/contra.vim" inside "~/.vim/plugin/". You might have to create the directory yourself. Or, assuming your setup actually matches with the above, you could run:

$ make vim_install

Visual Studio Code

The VS Code extension is written in TypeScript, so it has to be compiled too. This will require a million node modules. You are advised to run:

$ make code_install