This is part of my article about plain text formatting.

Textile

From this:

*I write in plain text a lot*. I want to put stuff on the web a lot. Oftentimes it's the stuff I already wrote in plain text. I wondered if I could learn some conventions that would *convert to XHTML for no extra work* after I'd written the plain text. In fact, I am writing this article now in "Ultraedit":http://www.ultraedit.com/ and later it will go on "bluebones.net":http://bluebones.net in HTML. And as I wrote ultraedit I wanted to put a link in for that very reason but wasn't sure whether to or not because it then makes this file html and I'd need to go back and put in <p> tags and so on. Let's just say that I think learning one of these formats would be A Good Idea(tm). For those wondering *why I don't write in HTML all the time* check out "these good reasons"(WikiWikiWeb reasons for not using HTML for text formatting):http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyDoesntWikiDoHtml. This seems to have been the "rationale behind Markdown":http://daringfireball.net/2004/03/dive_into_markdown. There are also numerous other text formats like "Textile"http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ and "Almost Free Text":http://www.maplefish.com/todd/aft.html with similar or identical motivations. I don't want to learn them all, so which one to pick? I couldn't find a good comparison or even much of a list of alternatives via Google. Answer: have a face off.

h2. The Test I thought I'd trial them on the text of "this very article":http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=read_story&story_id=94 . Some things I definitely want the winner to be able to do are: * Unordered lists * Like this one and bq(viewsource) # Code examples like this. print "This is essential!" The quality of tools available is also a big plus. For this to reap rewards I must be able to go effortlessly from text to XHTML and (strongly preferred) back again.

To this:

I write in plain text a lot. I want to put stuff on the web a lot. Oftentimes it’s the stuff I already wrote in plain text. I wondered if I could learn some conventions that would convert to XHTML for no extra work after I’d written the plain text. In fact, I am writing this article now in Ultraedit and later it will go on bluebones.net in HTML. And as I wrote ultraedit I wanted to put a link in for that very reason but wasn’t sure whether to or not because it then makes this file html and I’d need to go back and put in

tags and so on. Let’s just say that I think learning one of these formats would be A Good Idea™.

For those wondering why I don’t write in HTML all the time check out “these good reasons”(WikiWikiWeb reasons for not using HTML for text formatting):http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyDoesntWikiDoHtml.

This seems to have been the rationale behind Markdown. There are also numerous other text formats like “Textile”http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ and Almost Free Text with similar or identical motivations. I don’t want to learn them all, so which one to pick? I couldn’t find a good comparison or even much of a list of alternatives via Google. Answer: have a face off.

The Test

I thought I’d trial them on the text of this very article
.

Some things I definitely want the winner to be able to do are:

Unordered lists
Like this one

and

bq(viewsource)

# Code examples like this. print “This is essential!”

The quality of tools available is also a big plus. For this to reap rewards I must be able to go effortlessly from text to XHTML and (strongly preferred) back again.