Reliance on hoedown

Disclaimer: I am aware that opening this issue might come across as an entitled, low-effort example of “Why don't you just completely overhaul your existing work?”. Please believe that I'm actually very appreciative of the effort which has gone into making MacDown what it is today. I'm looking for an honest, open discussion here, and I would not be surprised if there are excellent reasons to stick with hoedown.

Markdown seems to be slowly but regularly evolving (e.g., see things like CommonMark etc.), with competing (but not incompatible) goals to (1) improve the predictability of markdown output for the “core” syntax; (2) enable various optional custom features defined as markdown extensions.

Currently, AFAIK, anything that has to do with markdown rendering in MacDown actually depends on hoedown, but the latest commit in hoedown/master was over five years ago. At some point, it becomes reasonable to ask what are the consequences of this stasis on MacDown, and whether there is a plan B if hoedown development has indeed stopped, and whether it would be worth it — even though it would certainly be quite a big undertaking — to replace hoedown with something easier to customize/extend.

Again, I realize this not a minor change one could implement lightly. I wish I was capable of looking into it myself, but I don't have the Objective-C chops to do so.

Looking forward to everyone's thoughts on the matter.

Start by reviewing MacDown's reliance on hoedown and locating the markdown-rendering integration. Compare the current dependency with the stated CommonMark and extensibility concerns; done would require an agreed replacement or modernization plan, not merely a small isolated edit.