Overview

pm_tools is a framework for authoring technical documentation in markdown. Basic markdown capabilities are provided by pandoc. Pm_tools extends pandoc-flavored markdown with "plugin" syntax that allows embedding:

• Plantuml diagrams
• Graphviz charts
• Wavedrom waveform diagrams
• Ditaa diagrams
• Flowchart.js diagrams
• Schemdraw circuit diagrams
• Mathjax formulas
• Arbitrary python code output
• Data structure (registers, packets) definitions
• MS Visio diagrams (as zoomable SVG)
• Excel tables (as HTML tables)
• Excel "screenshots" (as PNG)
• csv/tsv
• XSD schemas

Main output format is HTML (single-file), with PDF also supported.

Principles of pm_doc:

• Ability to edit documents fully offline
• Ability to view documents fully offline (Mathjax formulas currently require online connection or cached Mathjax)
• Single output document contained in a single HTML file (to make easy to copy / send by e-mail)

Requirements

• Windows
• Python 2.7
• MS Visio (for embedding Visio diagrams)
• MS Excel (for embedding Excel "screenshots")

Quick start

Create a file named hello.md with the following content:

# Quick start example

## Hello, World

```plantuml("Communication to the world")
Pm_doc -> World: Hello there
```

Run from the git bash (recommended) console:

python $PM_DOC/scripts/mmd2doc.py hello.md

Above command should produce hello.html file similar to this.

PM_TOOLS rendering of the README.md you are reading right now can be viewed here: README.html.

Next steps

An overview of all features with the examples can be found here: example.html. The source of this document is in doc/example.mmd. Best way to learn pm_tools features is to display source example.mmd and output example.html side-by-side and compare.

FIXME

The following features are missing from this pm_doc distribution:

• Word2mmd conversion
• Test/regressions
• Build/release automation
• Python 3 support
• Linux support
• Firefox and Safari browser support