xTxT

xTxT is simply a syntax for marking up plain-text documents. Using a minimal amount of markup, you can style and structure your text documents for display in a variety of output formats -- most commonly HTML and XHTML.

Goal

To provide a method of inputting information using a simple text editor that will provide the sophistication of modern formatted textual output without the complexities of conforming to a complicated source syntax. It is intended to be easily read and understood source text.

Overview

xTxT stands for eXtensible TeXT and provides a simple to remember way to enter plain-text documents that include style and structure. It is a markup language and is often used to general HTML output.

xTxt supports the following:

• Style - bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlighting, urgent text and more...
• Structure - headings, lists, paragraphs, regions, ...
• Context - dictionary definitions, quotations, citations, ...
• Navigation - outbound links to other resources, "anchors," or inbound links directly to a point in the page, ...
• Metadata - content which is not seen by human viewers, but is useful to search engines and programs browsing the document, ...
• Embedding - embed external data into your page, including XML, RSS, XHTML from other websites, data from a relational database, ...

An earlier attempt to provide Text markup is used by Project Gutenberg.

Examples

HTML: <h1>My Heading</h1>

xTxT:
/h1  
My Heading

HTML tags must be constructed exactly; if any of the braces or tag terminators are forgotten or mis-entered, the page will not render properly. xTxT minimized this kind of unnecessary work, by simplifying the tagging.

HTML: this is some bold text
xTxT: this is some \bold\ text

HTML: this is some italicized text
xTxT: this is some \\italicized\\ text

xTxT provides these types of simplified tag constructs for essentially all common HTML tag types, including lists;

HTML:
<ul>
 <li>Item 1</li>
 <li>Item 2</li>
 </ul>
 
xTxT:
/ul
Item 1
Item 2

And hyperlinks;

HTML:
<a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>\% \

xTxT:
[Google[http://www.google.com]]

For more information

• xTxT manual
• Syngnal - The developers of xTxT.
• xTxT home page