Include default set of remark plugins

[remcohaszing]

Initial checklist

• I read the support docs
• I read the contributing guide
• I agree to follow the code of conduct
• I searched issues and couldn’t find anything (or linked relevant results below)

Problem

Currently remark plugins need to be specified explicitly in order to use them. However, many users might not configure the mdx section in tsconfig.json. They might not even use tsconfig.json at all.

Solution

Provide remark-frontmatter and remark-gfm by default, unless plugins are explicitly specified.

This behaviour is similar to TypeScript. By default the language service supports a large set of the builtin library and loose options, but as soon as the user configures TypeScript properly, this config takes over.

Alternatives

I think remark-frontmatter and remark-gfm are the most commonly used, and provide nice defaults. The exact plugin list is up for discussion, or could even change over time.

[wooorm]

yep sounds good!

[adueck]

Perhaps also remark-mdx-frontmatter along with remark-frontmatter which exports the frontmatter variables, although I don't know how standard practice it is to have the frontmatter variables exported.

---
title: My Post
---

The title is {title}

[remcohaszing]

Thanks for the input!

remark-mdx-frontmatter only provides a transformer, not a parser plugin. Currently we only support parser plugins. I created an issue for this (#297). This argument doesn’t exclude it from being added later.

I agree remark-mdx-frontmatter is a good candidate by just looking at its popularity. However, the different popular values for the name option make the defaults to use for IntelliSense ambiguous. I.e. pretty common are { name: 'meta' } and { name: 'frontmatter' }. For this reason I believe it’s better not to add it.

[wooorm]

You could maybe make the default frontmatter (I still think exposing as a single name always is best). And document here and there that that’s what’s recommended, and if someone picks something else, that’s on them?

[adueck]

Ya I agree it's probably less necessary/useful to have remark-mdx-frontmatter. After years of dealing with lots of mdx content I can't tell you guys how thankful I am to see this stuff being worked on! 🙇‍♂️

[remcohaszing]

I'm also inclined to believe it's the right approach to pick a default name (frontmatter seems right), and remove support for keys as export names in remark-mdx-frontmatter in a next major version. Still, for it to work here, transformers need to he supported. I agree it's nice to include it by default once those requirements are met.

[remcohaszing]

Released in vscode-mdx@1.5.0, @mdx-js/language-server@0.2.0 🎉

[JounQin]

@remcohaszing I think .remarkrc should be supported at the same time?