# Generic directives/plugins syntax

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syntax/444>\
**Category:** Extensions\
**Created:** [September 6, 2014, 9:50am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syntax/444 "2014-09-06T09:50:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 136

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**Author:** ![mb21](https://talk.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/mb21/32/162_2.png) [@mb21](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/mb21)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syntax/444/136 "2015-02-15T14:13:58Z")

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Interesting, we first thought about having both arguments (i.e. filenames, urls and other identifiers) and options (i.e. key-value pairs which we call [attributes](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/consistent-attribute-syntax/272/)) as well. But then we dropped the former since having both is somewhat redundant—you can simply write `:youtube[funny cat]{id=1234 fullscreen=true}` instead of `:youtube[funny cat](1234){fullscreen=true}`—and it has the potential to confuse users unnecessarily.

(Note that you can still have attributes as well as content, the difference being that attribute-key and -values are plain strings, while content is markdown as well.)

> Some sphinx/docutils features do not map neatly with the current extension we are discussing here.

@lu_zero, are you talking about the markdown directives proposal having no arguments, or?

Do you guys think this poses a major problem for mapping to docutils?

@ericholscher, would love to hear your feedback on the proposel in the [first post in this topic](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syntax/444), which I’ve updated a few times as the discussion progressed.

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