Glorified curly bubbly templates,
Templates with a twist,
Duplex templates,
Mirroring blueprints,
Context aware frames,
Self-replicating, self-terminating forms.
TwoFold is a small command line app that allows plain text files to behave like dynamic files. It is
a hybrid between a text expander and a template engine.
It is also inspired by Emacs Org-mode,
Python Jupyter Notebooks and React JS.
Check the Similar and comparison page for more details.
TwoFold operates by processing a text file and identifying all XML-like tags, transforming them into useful outputs. It is compatible with XML and HTML documents, but you can customize the tag markers, so you can make them look like jinja2, nunjucks, etc.
TwoFold can watch your files for changes and allow real-time collaboration within the same file and location, for example: to validate some information, or calculate some statistics (similar to a Spreadsheet application), or check for spelling errors (similar to a Document editor), and more.
It will work with any plain-text file like: .txt, Markdown, Emacs Org, reStructured Text, HTML, XML, and source-code files.
Probably WON'T work with binary files like: .doc, .pages, .xls, .numbers, .pdf, images, audio, or video. Running TwoFold on binary files MIGHT break them (with the default config), because media files contain XML-like Exif or IPTC tags.
The single tags are one use only, they are consumed after they render the response. The double
tags are refreshed every time the file is rendered. They have different use-cases, different pros
and cons.
Read more in the Tags documentation.
This repository provides the framework to parse and evaluate the tags and a few core tags. You can
see the list with the command: tfold --tags.
It is easy to write your own tags, and load them with the cmd line switch: tfold --funcs myFolder,
where "myFolder" will be a local folder with TypeScript/ JavaScript files.
Read more in the
Tags development documentation.
TwoFold is not published on NPM, because it's not working with Node.js. Therefore, you have to download it and launch it with Bun.
Git clone and run example:
git clone https://github.com/ShinyTrinkets/twofold.ts.git --depth=1
cd twofold.ts
bun tfold --helpThe advantage of cloning is that you can later pull the latest version.
Alternatively, you can download the code as ZIP snapshot and extract:
wget https://github.com/ShinyTrinkets/twofold.ts/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
unzip main.zip
cd twofold.ts-main
bun tfold --helpYou can also build a standalone executable and use it instead of the code, it takes less than a second:
bun build ./src/cli.ts --compile --outfile tfold
tfold --helpYou can move the executable anywhere you need, eg: /usr/local/bin/
TwoFold uses XML-like tags to call JavaScript functions. If the tags are badly formed, or unknown, or they don't return anything, you won't see anything in the output.
If you have a Markdown file called example.md like this:
## Hello world!
It's a nice <emojiSunMoon /> outside and the time is <emojiClock />. Should I
play with TwoFold some more ? <yesOrNo></yesOrNo> ugh... <line '42' />You can scan the file without rendering, to see what tags are available:
tfold --scan example.mdThe output will look something like this:
(2✂︎f) Scan: example.md
Text length :: 152
[3.77ms] scan-example.md
✓ emojiSunMoon
✓ emojiClock
✓ yesOrNo
✓ line
Then you call TwoFold to render it like this:
tfold example.mdThe file should be something like:
## Hello world!
It's a nice ☀️ outside and the time is 🕛.
Should I play with TwoFold some more ? <yesOrNo>Yes</yesOrNo> ugh...
------------------------------------------To see a list with all the available tags, you can call:
tfold --tagsRead more in the Tags documentation.
Check the Changelog (the past) and the Roadmap (the future).
This TwoFold in TypeScript, running in Bun.
The old version of TwoFold, written for Node.js is at: ShinyTrinkets/twofold.js.
For creating your own tags, read the Tags development documentation.
MIT © Shiny Trinkets.