Proposal: a data feature for sharing information across extensions

[bent10]

What pain point are you perceiving?

The objective of this proposal is to introduce a data feature that allows us to share information across extensions using a key-value pairs object.

Describe the solution you'd like

• Introduce a data object that can be accessed within any extension

• The data is essentially a key-value pairs object where extensions can set and retrieve data

• Extensions can use a simple API to set and retrieve data in the data object through the walkTokens, pre/post hooks, and custom extensions fields (specifically, tokenizer and renderer)

  An extension can set data like this:

  this.setData('foo', 'bar')

  Then we can retrieve the data set:

  this.getData()  // returns {foo: 'bar'}
  this.getData('foo')  // returns 'bar'

• The data will be scoped to the current Marked instance to prevent conflicts between extensions in different instances

Benefits:

• Enhanced Collaboration
• Access and utilize data from other extensions (Extensibility)
• Ability to pass context or configuration data among different extensions

[UziTech]

All of those benefits seem possible without marked being the holder of this data object. For example the marked-gfm-heading-id extension provides a list of the headings for a table of contents extension to use.

What is the benefit of marked holding this information if marked isn't using any of it?