What is Quarkdown used for?

Quarkdown is a Kotlin-based typesetting system that extends Markdown with functions and scripting to compile books, papers, presentations, websites and knowledge bases from one source. It is a good fit for academic papers and theses, slide decks written in Markdown, and documentation and knowledge bases from one source.

Is Quarkdown open source?

Yes. Quarkdown is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at iamgio/quarkdown and is written mainly in Kotlin.

Yes. Quarkdown is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is Quarkdown an alternative to?

Quarkdown is an open-source alternative to HelpNDoc. Other open-source alternatives to HelpNDoc include Gramax and Pandoc.

Is Quarkdown actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Quarkdown was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.6.3, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 16k stars on GitHub.

Quarkdown: open-source alternative to HelpNDoc

About Quarkdown

Quarkdown is a modern typesetting system based on Markdown. A single project can compile into a print-ready book, an academic paper, a knowledge base or an interactive presentation, so writers can reuse one source across several formats. It is written in Kotlin and builds on CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown.

What sets it apart is that it extends Markdown into a Turing-complete language. Syntax additions let you call functions, and an expanding standard library provides layout builders, input and output, math, conditional statements and loops. You can also define your own functions and variables entirely within Markdown. Editor extensions are available, and the README covers installation, quickstart, creating a project, compiling to different targets, a demo and a comparison with other tools. PDF output is among the targets, as topics for papers and slides suggest.

Quarkdown is licensed under GPL-3.0 and installed locally, so there is no hosted service to depend on. It appeals to academics, technical writers and educators who want programmable documents with better layout control than plain Markdown, without moving to LaTeX.

Key features

Markdown extended with functions and variables
Compiles to books, papers, slides and websites
Standard library with layout, math and loops
Support for custom user-defined functions
Extensions for popular editors
CommonMark and GFM compatible

Good fit for

→Academic papers and theses
→Slide decks written in Markdown
→Documentation and knowledge bases from one source

Built with: Kotlin
Tags: markdown; typesetting; documentation; presentations; kotlin; pdf; static-site-generator; scripting; papers

Quarkdown: questions and answers

What is Quarkdown used for?: Quarkdown is a Kotlin-based typesetting system that extends Markdown with functions and scripting to compile books, papers, presentations, websites and knowledge bases from one source. It is a good fit for academic papers and theses, slide decks written in Markdown, and documentation and knowledge bases from one source.
Is Quarkdown open source?: Yes. Quarkdown is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at iamgio/quarkdown and is written mainly in Kotlin.
Is Quarkdown free?: Yes. Quarkdown is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is Quarkdown an alternative to?: Quarkdown is an open-source alternative to HelpNDoc. Other open-source alternatives to HelpNDoc include Gramax and Pandoc.
Is Quarkdown actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Quarkdown was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.6.3, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 16k stars on GitHub.