mdit-plain

1.0.1 · active · verified Thu Apr 16

mdit-plain is a Python renderer for the markdown-it-py library, designed to convert Markdown documents into clean plain text by effectively stripping out all markup. Its primary purpose is to facilitate Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other text-based analyses where unformatted content is required. The current version is 1.0.1, released in January 2023, indicating a slow release cadence since then.

Common errors

```
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'markdown_it'
```
cause The core dependency 'markdown-it-py' is not installed.

fix Install the required dependency: `pip install markdown-it-py`
```
ImportError: cannot import name 'RendererPlain' from 'mdit_plain.renderer'
```
cause mdit-plain is not installed, or there's a typo in the import path.

fix Ensure mdit-plain is installed (`pip install mdit-plain`) and the import statement is `from mdit_plain.renderer import RendererPlain`.
```
Markdown syntax (e.g., `**bold**`, `[link](url)`) is still present in the output after rendering.
```
cause The MarkdownIt parser was not correctly configured to use `mdit-plain.RendererPlain`. It's likely using markdown-it-py's default HTML renderer.

fix When initializing `MarkdownIt`, ensure you pass `renderer_cls=RendererPlain`: `parser = MarkdownIt(renderer_cls=RendererPlain)`.

Warnings

breaking mdit-plain relies on the internal API of markdown-it-py. Major version updates in markdown-it-py (e.g., v4.0.0, released after mdit-plain 1.0.1) may introduce breaking internal API changes that can cause mdit-plain to fail or produce incorrect output.
Fix: Check for official mdit-plain updates or compatibility notes for newer markdown-it-py versions. If no update is available, consider pinning markdown-it-py to a compatible older version (e.g., `<4.0.0`) or implementing a custom plain text renderer.
gotcha mdit-plain primarily strips Markdown syntax. It does not perform advanced text normalization, such as intelligently collapsing multiple spaces, standardizing inconsistent line breaks, or converting complex Markdown structures (like tables) into highly readable plain text formats. The output might retain some whitespace artifacts.
Fix: For highly normalized plain text output, additional post-processing steps (e.g., using regular expressions for whitespace, or a library like BeautifulSoup if an intermediate HTML conversion is acceptable) may be necessary after mdit-plain has processed the text.
gotcha The library has not seen updates since January 2023. While functional for its core purpose, this indicates limited active maintenance for new Markdown features, bug fixes for edge cases, or compatibility with future Python versions or markdown-it-py releases.
Fix: Be aware that new Markdown syntax or complex parsing requirements might not be supported. Consider contributing to the project, forking it, or exploring alternative solutions if active development and immediate support are critical.

Install

pip install mdit-plain Install stable version

Imports

RendererPlain

from mdit_plain.renderer import RendererPlain

MarkdownIt
wrong:
```
from markdown_it_py import MarkdownIt
```
correct:
```
from markdown_it import MarkdownIt
```
The core library is imported as 'markdown_it', not 'markdown_it_py'.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to initialize markdown-it-py with the mdit-plain renderer to convert a Markdown string into plain text, effectively removing all formatting.

from markdown_it import MarkdownIt
from mdit_plain.renderer import RendererPlain

markdown_text = """
# Header One

This is **some** *markdown* text with a [link](https://example.com).

* List item 1
* List item 2

> A blockquote.
"""

# Initialize MarkdownIt parser with the plain text renderer
parser = MarkdownIt(renderer_cls=RendererPlain)

# Render the markdown to plain text
plain_text = parser.render(markdown_text)

print(plain_text)
# Expected Output:
# Header One
#
# This is some markdown text with a link.
#
# * List item 1
# * List item 2
#
# > A blockquote.

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