Dinotext
Dinotext is a markup language, inspired by Markdown, which is the engine powering my main website. It is currently in a very early stage, but I have plans to make it a more formal markup language with real-world applications.
Dinotext is a small markup language I started writing to power my personal website. It’s inspired by Markdown, but deliberately narrower in scope — only the features I actually use day to day, implemented in a way I fully understand.
Why build it
Markdown is great, but every parser I reached for came with far more surface area than I needed. Writing Dinotext was partly a learning exercise and partly a way to have a parser I could freely tweak for my own site’s quirks.
Current status
Right now it handles headings, formatted text, images and hyperlinks — enough to publish a new page in seconds. The current implementation is a PHP parser tied to my website.
Where it’s going
The next step is turning Dinotext into a more formal language: a clearer spec, a reference implementation that isn’t tied to my site, and a handful of features I’ve been missing. Early stage, but the idea keeps growing on me.