wapdown

Compile Markdown into a WML deck for WAP browsers.

wapdown trail.md -o trail.wml

Write a document the ordinary way; get back valid WML 1.3 that a 2001 handset can actually navigate.

Why this is not just another text exporter

Most Markdown converters transform a document: same content, different markup, one file in and one file out. A WML deck is not that shape. A WAP screen is a few lines tall, scrolling is painful, and the input device is a numeric keypad — so a deck is a set of short cards joined by softkeys and menus, not one long page.

So wapdown restructures. It decides where cards begin, builds a menu that exists nowhere in your source, wires up Back and More controls, and paginates anything still too big for the device's cache. That is why it has more knobs than a plain text exporter needs: the knobs are the tool.

Install

Install the CLI with uv:

uv tool install --from git+https://codeberg.org/randogoth/wapdown/ wapdown

Zero runtime dependencies, Python 3.13+.

Cards

A document with no options becomes a single card. Splitting is always opt-in, and there are two ways to ask for it.

Manual dividers — put a {.card} or {.card Title} line wherever a new card should start:

Intro shown on the menu card...

{.card Weather}
Cold and clear.

{.card Trail Status}
- North Loop: open

Heading-level splitting — --split-level 2 starts a new card at every ##, which fits the common one-H1-title-plus-H2-sections document:

wapdown trail.md --split-level 2

If a document contains any {.card} markers, they win and --split-level is ignored: an explicit boundary in the document is a stronger statement of intent than a rule passed on the command line.

Navigation

Once a document resolves to two or more cards, wapdown builds the classic WAP-portal shape — a menu card listing each section, each spoke reachable in one press and returning with Back:

wapdown trail.md --split-level 2 --menu-style select

--menu-style select renders those choices as a <select> rather than a list of links, so the destination is picked with a digit instead of scrolled to. On a keypad that is usually the better default; it is not the default here only because it changes how the deck looks.

--no-menu switches to a linear book instead: cards chained with More and Back, no hub.

--home-label Home adds an options softkey jumping straight back to the menu from anywhere, which <prev/> alone cannot do since it only pops history.

Shared navigation is hoisted into a deck-level <template> so it is transmitted once rather than repeated on every card — a real saving when the whole deck has to fit in a cache. --no-template-nav turns that off.

Size limits

WAP 1.x gateways cap how much deck a device will hold. --max-card-bytes (default 1400, 0 disables) is the safety net: any card still over budget after section splitting gets paginated with Prev/More. Some headroom is reserved for each card's navigation markup, which is why the effective budget is slightly below the number you pass.

When a deck as a whole is too large, paginating inside one file does not help — the file still has to be fetched whole. --deck-per-card writes one .wml file per section into an output directory, cross-linked by filename, so a device only ever downloads the card it asked for:

wapdown trail.md --split-level 2 --deck-per-card -o ./decks/
# decks/index.wml  decks/weather.wml  decks/trail-status.wml  ...

In menu mode the hub lands in index.wml. In linear mode there is no hub, so the entry point is the first section's file.

Images

wapdown performs no image conversion. Most WAP 1.x browsers render only WBMP, so referencing a PNG generally yields a broken-image placeholder on the device. --images decides what to do about that:

Value	Behaviour
keep (default)	Emit <img> as written, whatever the format.
alt	Replace non-WBMP images with their alt text, and warn.
drop	Remove non-WBMP images entirely, and warn.

.wbmp sources always pass through untouched.

Configuration

Every option can be set on the command line or in the document's frontmatter. The frontmatter key is the long flag name with underscores; command-line flags win.

---
title: Trail Conditions
split_level: 2
menu_style: select
cache_control: 0
---

# Trail Conditions
...

Flag	Frontmatter	Default	Meaning
--title	title	(none)	Deck title, used on the menu card.
--split-level	split_level	0	Heading level that starts a new card; 0 disables. Ignored when {.card} markers are present.
--max-card-bytes	max_card_bytes	1400	Per-card byte safety net; 0 disables.
--menu / --no-menu	menu	true	Hub-and-spoke menu vs. linear More/Back chaining.
--menu-style	menu_style	links	links or select for the menu's choices.
--deck-per-card	deck_per_card	false	Write one file per section into the output directory.
--nav-next-label	nav_next_label	More	Forward label.
--nav-prev-label	nav_prev_label	Prev	Label between pagination parts.
--nav-back-label	nav_back_label	Back	Label back to the menu or previous section.
--home-label	home_label	(none)	Adds an options softkey to the menu card.
--template-nav / --no-template-nav	template_nav	true	Hoist shared nav into a <template>.
--images	images	keep	keep, alt, or drop.
--cache-control	cache_control	(none)	Emit a Cache-Control: max-age=N meta element.
--access-domain	access_domain	(none)	Emit <access domain=...>.
--access-path	access_path	(none)	Emit <access path=...>.

Markdown support

Markdown	WML
Headings	<p><b><big> for the first on a card, <p><b> after
Paragraphs, lists, rules	<p> — WML has no list element, so bullets and numbers become literal text
**bold**, *italic*	<b>, <i>
~~strike~~, `code`	markers stripped; WML has no equivalent
Links	<a href>
Images	<img src alt>, subject to --images
Fenced/indented code	<p> with <br/> between lines
Blockquotes	<p><i>
Pipe tables	<p><table columns="N"> with a bold header row
{.include file.md}	inlined before conversion

Two consequences of WML's own grammar are worth knowing:

• A literal $ is written $$. WML uses $ to introduce a variable substitution, so wapdown doubles it for you. Permit fee: $5 comes out as Permit fee: $$5, which the device renders as $5.
• Link labels cannot carry emphasis. WML declares <a> as (#PCDATA | br | img)*, so there is nowhere valid to put a <b> inside one. [**go** now](url) becomes go now, with the markers stripped rather than translated.

WML 1.3 is the only supported DTD, by design rather than by flag.

Serving a deck

Serve .wml as text/vnd.wap.wml — a browser that receives text/html will usually refuse to render it. --cache-control 0 is worth setting for content that changes, since WAP gateways cache aggressively.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest                  # unit, golden, and well-formedness tests
uv run --extra dtd pytest      # ...plus validation against the real WML 1.3 DTD

The DTD is vendored at tests/dtd/wml13.dtd so the suite never depends on fetching a twenty-year-old URL. DTD validation needs lxml and is skipped when it is absent.

Golden files under tests/golden/ pin whole-document output. After an intentional renderer change:

uv run python tests/regenerate_golden.py
jj diff tests/golden          # the diff is the change, stated in output

Architecture

Markdown is parsed into a stream of block events, which a renderer turns into output. The pieces are registered as plugins (src/wapdown/plugins/), so another WAP-era target — HDML, i-mode cHTML — can be added alongside wml without restructuring anything.

• parsers/markdown.py — Markdown to BlockEvents
• renderers/wml/inline.py — inline markup and WML's escaping rules
• renderers/wml/deck.py — sectioning, byte packing, navigation topology
• renderers/wml/renderer.py — element emission
• config.py — defaults, frontmatter, and CLI layering

Unlike a streaming text renderer, the WML renderer buffers the whole event stream: card boundaries, menu choices, and nav targets all depend on knowing the document's full structure up front.

Credit

The WML renderer began life inside md2txt, a suite of plain-text Markdown exporters, and was extracted here because a deck compiler is a different kind of thing from a text exporter.

License

MIT