Examples

A worked demonstration of the mdhtml pipeline end to end: one source document, every output register.

The document

legal_demo.ipynb is a small offer-letter template written as a solveit dialog (five Markdown notes in an .ipynb). It exercises the dialect features that matter across converters:

• Headings with ids (## Compensation {#sec-comp}) referenced from other notes: single refs ([@sec-offer]), a group ([@sec-comp; @sec-equity; @sec-atwill]), and custom text ([your cash compensation @sec-comp]).
• Mustache template tokens: inline variables () and block section markers ( … ``).
• A footnote, for id-namespacing to exercise.

The build script

render_demo.py reads the notes and renders each register. Run it from this folder (or anywhere - paths are script-relative); it rewrites the outputs beside itself:

file	register	how
legal_demo.md	dialect source	the notes, concatenated verbatim
legal_demo-render.md	portable Markdown	to_md: refs baked to “Section 1.(a)” text, numbered headings, tokens code-wrapped via mustache_code
legal_demo.html	HTML	to_html: refs as live links, numbered headings, variables as <input> boxes and section markers as <code> via a local template_token callback
legal_demo.docx	Word, mail-merge	mdhtml2docx.convert(tmpl=mustache_fields): refs as live REF fields, variables as MERGEFIELDs (Mailings tab: attach a CSV whose header row is the field names, Preview Results, Finish & Merge)
legal_demo-form.docx	Word, interactive form	a local four-line callable returning ('control', name): variables become grey click-and-type content controls
legal_demo-bound.docx	Word, synced form	the same callable shape returning ('bound', name): controls data-bind to one XML node per variable, so filling `` once updates every usage live, and filled values are machine-readable from the docx’s customXml/item1.xml
legal_demo.typ	Typst	to_typst: refs as live #refs Typst resolves at compile time, a generated legal-numbering rule, footnotes as #footnote, tokens as monospace literals
legal_demo.pdf	PDF	to_pdf: the same markup compiled by the typst CLI - the finished, typeset register
legal_demo-filled.md, legal_demo-filled.pdf	filled document	filldemo.py: fill_md resolves the variables and sections from a plain dict (still-symbolic Markdown out; missing fields warn or raise in both directions), then the normal PDF pipeline typesets it - signature_date is deliberately left for a later fill pass

The pattern to notice: mdhtml owns the grammar (the MUSTACHE delimiters and the mustache_kind sigil classifier), each converter owns a contract (parse callbacks for HTML, the tmpl callable for docx, tmpl on to_md), and each register is a few-line callable composing the two. Adding a register - DocuSign anchors, say - is another small callable, not a converter change.

The three baked registers tell one liveness story from the same source: Markdown bakes refs to text, HTML bakes them to links, docx bakes them to fields that Word keeps live.

The signature block at the letter’s end is a raw HTML table in the source - multi-line cells with no alignment gymnastics, and fill_md reaches inside it since template tokens are recognized between tags in raw HTML. Its custom-style="Borderless Table" picks the borderless table style each converter owns: a reference style in docx, a table_styles= entry for Typst (stroke: none), a CSS rule keyed on .sig-block in HTML. The <br> rows reserve signing space, and ordinary text keeps flowing after the table.

The other files

• examples.ipynb - a notebook rendering the feature examples from docs/sample.md through to_mdhtml, for eyeballing the raw MDHTML output.
• demo.md - a minimal dialect scrap (task list, fenced div, math) handy for quick CLI runs: mdhtml examples/demo.md.