md2nexus

This is a command-line tool for converting single files or directories of files from Markdown to valid Nexusmods bbcode. The Nexus bbcode editors are hell to use if you're writing any complex documentation.

To install, you can download a MacOS, Linux, or Windows prebuilt executable from the releases. Or you can use Homebrew:

brew tap ceejbot/tap
brew install md2nexus

If you have rust installed and prefer to build from source:

gh repo clone ceejbot/md2nexus
cd md2nexus
cargo build --release

# once installed:
md2nexus --help

Usage

Simplest possible usage:

cat docs.md | md2nexus > docs.bbcode
# or
cat docs.md | md2nexus | pbcopy
# and then paste into the nexus editor

If you don't specify an input file, md2nexus reads stdin. If you don't specify an output file, md2nexus writes the converted text to stdout. It prints nothing to stdout other than program output.

If the input option is a directory, md2nexus converts all markdown files in the input directory and writes them to the output option, which must be a directory. If you do not specify an output directory, it writes them to the current directory. It prints the names of converted files to stdout.

Notes on conversion

Markdown is far more expressive than Nexus bbcode, which is a stunted bbcode variation. This tool converts some Markdown concepts to code blocks to make them work. For example, to handle Markdown tables, this tool uses a table output formatter intended for terminal usage and wraps it all in a code block.

Github-flavored markdown is supported. MDX is not supported at all, as Nexus bbcode doesn't allow components or javascript or indeed any potentially dangerous user-generated content.

In-document references such as footnotes or link references are not converted into usable links, but they are emitted into the text. ¹

Full usage

$ md2nexus -h
A command-line tool to convert gfm markdown to NexusMods-flavored bbcode

Usage: md2nexus [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -i, --input <PATHNAME>           Path to an input file or directory.
                                   If omitted, input is read from stdin.
  -o, --output <PATHNAME>          Path to an output file or directory
  -c, --completions <COMPLETIONS>  Emit completion data for your preferred shell [possible values:
                                   bash, elvish, fish, powershell, zsh]
      --license                    Print GPL-3.0 license information
  -h, --help                       Print help (see more with '--help')
  -V, --version                    Print version

Implementation notes

The heavy lifting is done by the markdown crate, which generates an AST for input documents. The tool visits the tree's nodes and generates appropriate bbcode.

LICENSE

GPL-3.0.

Footnotes

1. This is an example footnote. It's better than nothing? ↩