Quarkdown: Markdown That Builds Papers, Slides, and Websites

You know the drill. You write a README in Markdown, then switch to LaTeX for a paper, then whip up a presentation in Google Slides, then maybe a static site in something else. Each time you're rewriting the same content in a different format, fighting with syntax, and losing your mind over inconsistent styling.

Quarkdown wants to end that. It's a single Markdown syntax that can output everything from academic papers to slide decks to websites. And the output looks legit — not like someone ran Markdown through a CSS generator and called it a day.

What It Does

Quarkdown is a document processor that takes your Markdown and compiles it into multiple output formats. Think of it as a superset of Markdown with extra syntax for things like slides, cross-references, bibliographies, and layout commands. You write once, and it spits out a PDF, a web page, or a presentation.

Under the hood, it's a command-line tool written in Java. You give it a .qmd file (or whatever extension they use — check the repo), and it handles the rendering. The GitHub repo is at iamgio/quarkdown.

Why It's Cool

The standout feature is one source of truth. You don't maintain separate files for your paper and your talk. You just mark certain slides with a [slide] directive, and Quarkdown knows to render those in presentation mode. For papers, you get footnotes, citations, and a proper bibliography.

The other big win is no LaTeX dependency for basics. Quarkdown handles math, diagrams, and tables without forcing you into LaTeX hell. If you need LaTeX-level control, it's there, but you're not locked in.

Also, the output is clean. The PDFs look like real papers (not web pages printed to PDF), and the slides feel like actual slides — not a div soup.

How to Try It

Clone the repo and build from source (Java required, so have JDK 21+ handy):

git clone https://github.com/iamgio/quarkdown.git
cd quarkdown
./gradlew build

Or grab a prebuilt JAR from the releases page on GitHub.

Write a quick test file hello.qmd:

# Hello Quarkdown This is a test. It will render as a paper, a slide, and a website. [slide]
## Slide 1 This only shows in presentation mode.

Run:

java -jar quarkdown.jar hello.qmd

It'll generate a PDF, an HTML page, and a slide deck (PDF or HTML depending on config).

Check the repo's example/ folder for more realistic cases.