Archive for September 2004

Textile

By Rudolf Ammann :: 9 September 2004

Dean Allen calls his Textile "A Humane Web Text Generator." Let's pick this apart: a "Web text generator" is something that generates or prepares text for the Web. What, however, does "humane" mean?

"Humane" means that writers shouldn't have to grapple with HTML. They should be able to use simpler, easier markup instead -- which is exactly what Textile offers.

Both Tsure-zure.net and Tawawa.org have Textile built into their respective publishing platforms.

Here's the Textile markup that you'll be most likely to use:

Blockquote: bq.

This snippet:

bq. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec rutrum est eu mauris. In volutpat blandit felis. Suspendisse eget pede. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Quisque sed arcu. Aenean purus nulla, condimentum ac, pretium at, commodo sit amet, turpis.

will generate this block quotation:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec rutrum est eu mauris. In volutpat blandit felis. Suspendisse eget pede. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Quisque sed arcu. Aenean purus nulla, condimentum ac, pretium at, commodo sit amet, turpis.

Remember that quotations -- whether inline or block -- are supposed to be unmodified and true to the original. When you quote, make sure you include a link where available.

Numeric list: #

This snippet:

# Tea
# Coffee
# Orange juice

will generate this list:

1. Tea
2. Coffee
3. Orange juice

Bulleted list: *

This snippet:

* Tea
* Coffee
* Orange juice

will generate this list:

• Tea
• Coffee
• Orange juice

Italics: _emphasis_

To italicise a word or phrase, put underscores before and after it.

Boldface: *strong*

To render a word or phrase in boldface, put an asterisk before and after it.

Hyperlink: "linktext":url

This snippet:

"Tawawa":http://www.tawawa.org

will generate this hyperlink:

Tawawa

Image: !imageurl!

This code snippet:

!http://www.tawawa.org/graphics/tanuki440.jpg!

will pull this image into your post:

Using Textile

You can try out all of the above on the Textile page, where you will also find some more markup.

On Tsure-zure.net, Textile is turned on by default, and you will find a list of available markup to the left of the posting area.

If you wish, you can use Textile here on Tawawa as well, thanks to Brad Choate's Textile Plugin. Once you're logged in to the Tawawa Kitchen and go to the New Entry page, take a look at the Text Formatting menu at the bottom of the page. It lets you choose between "Convert Line Breaks," "None," and "Textile." The default setting is "Convert Line Breaks," which doesn't do much: it only creates the appropriate HTML output when you hit the Return key twice for a fresh paragraph. The "None" setting doesn't do anything at all: with this setting you have to input all HTML markup by hand (which, incidentally, gives you a great deal of freedom if you know your HTML and want to use some tricky special formatting). The "Textile" setting, obviously, allows you to use Textile markup in your post.

Happy posting!