Markup Matrix
created 2005-01-25 23:57:53
(Up to: Building Blocks User Controlled Wiki Formatting )
OK then, an attempt to capture differences between various simple text formatting languages. No commentspace yet, so feel free to mail suggestions to janus-markup@exmosis.net (remove all asterisks, natch). I'm also deliberately avoiding formatting used in purely in wikis, as that's a whole new can of things.
- See discussion at Twiki.
In some kind of "interest" order... Blanks yet to be filled in.
| Name | Formatting Rules |
Code Language | Tables? | Integration | HTML to Text? |
Notes/Comments |
| Markdown | Rules, Example | Perl, PHP port |
No - see notes |
MT, Blosxom, BBEdit |
Yes, via Python tool |
Can embed HTML without much worry, e.g. for tables |
| reStructured Text |
Rules | Python |
Yes |
Python | Part of DocUtils |
|
| deplate |
Rules | Ruby |
Yes | |||
| Grutatxt |
Example |
Perl |
Yes |
Not AFAIK |
||
| EtText |
Perl |
No? |
Yes |
|||
| atx |
Rules |
Python |
No |
|||
| Setext |
Looks dead? |
|||||
| Textile |
See page |
Yes |
Web only? |
|||
| YAML |
Example |
Various |
More config->text than text->other? |
- Francois Granger is working on MarkupToMarkup, a tool to convert between as many different types of markup as possible, via an XHTML middle ground. Try the online version.
- ReSTedit is a Mac OSX application to edit ReStructured Text and, now, Markdown too.
- More Markdown discussion, implementations and tools - useful resource
It'll be interesting to see if these lightweight formats do start to coalesce into a particular standard as time goes on. These could have bearing:
