Hmm yeah that's true. Tough call since that is the front-matter is a 99% case, and the idea of file's being able to have their own metadata is kinda core to the functionality. I wonder if I could just add support for both JSON/YAML by default. Would get annoying if people started asking for more front-matter types thought...
It's cerainly as sane as sane defaults come, but I agree that if the philosophy is 'everything-as-a-plugin' (another excellent choice for this kind of tool) then everything should be a plugin :)
Now to build something with this, I can see a 'dual write' plugin in my immediate future...
Thought about it a bit more (was actually convinced for a second) but then I realized that that would mean lots of the other plugins would be depending on the YAML/JSON plugins as well. And when you have dependencies between plugins like that things start to get too complicated for the benefits I think.
> All of the logic in Metalsmith is handled by plugins.
But on the other hand, you say this:
> Each plugin is invoked with the contents of the source directory, with every file parsed for optional YAML front-matter, like so…
The YAML parsing should be a plugin as well, some of us have existing JSON front-matter files.