Markdown output
The wcl wdoc markdown render target, its block mapping, caveats, and frontmatter.
wcl wdoc markdown <file> --out <dir> (alias md) renders a document to a folder of Markdown files instead of HTML. The layout mirrors wdoc build: one .md per page, multi-site documents land under <out>/<site>/, and generated assets go in _wdoc/. The target is built for AI / text consumers, so it favours textual fidelity over visual polish.
wcl wdoc markdown docs/main.wcl --out docs/_md
wcl wdoc md docs/main.wcl --out docs/_md --site reference
What maps to what
Prose, headings, lists, tables, fenced code (with the language tag), callouts (as GitHub alert blockquotes) and images render as native Markdown. Inline emphasis, code spans and links are preserved — and an internal page link is rewritten to its .md sibling. Equations stay textual: a math block becomes a $$ … $$ fence and inline math keeps its LaTeX.
Anything inherently visual — diagrams (and the charts, timelines, maps and tilemaps nested in them), terminals and wireframes — renders to a self-contained, static .svg file in _wdoc/, which the Markdown references with an image link. Interactivity (pan / zoom, controls, map popups) is dropped.
Skipped blocks
Videos are skipped: an online video (YouTube / Vimeo) leaves a plain Markdown link, and a local video file is dropped (a static .md can't play it).
Front matter
A page can carry YAML front matter via a frontmatter block — handy for tagging pages with model-facing metadata. The block is an open, schemaless kind: write any key = value entries you like. They serialize (in source order) to a ----fenced header at the top of the page's .md. The HTML and PDF targets ignore the block entirely.
page intro { sites = [:demo]
frontmatter {
title = "Intro"
tags = ["overview", "api"]
audience = "llm"
weight = 3
}
h1 "Intro"
p "Body text."
}
Arbitrary keys are fine
The frontmatter type is declared @schemaless in the stdlib, so undeclared keys pass WCL's strict schema check — no per-instance marker is needed.
Related