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ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

Lightweight (humane) markup languages

Hi, all, again. in my search for AbiWord-replacement I have came across the so called lightweight markup languages. I have tried txt2tags. It is nice, but still it lacks some things I need.
Basically, I need a tool that would allow me to write articles (I don't have to deal with mathematics or computers science, so I don't need graphics and equations like TeX's Lout's or troff's ones) in nano or PyRoom and later convert them to RTF. Most tools I've seen are rather HTML-oriented or designed for people who write manuals and other sorts of technical documentation. Here is what I need:
-RTF/DOC/ODT output support (at least something)
-beautifiers (italic, bold, underline, strike-through).
-paragraph styling (indentification, allighnment, etc.) - something that txt2tags manages poorly or not at all.
-lists and tables. Basically, I really like the way txt2tags manages these.
-annotations. That's required for academic works, in orded to specify all references and quotes at the end of each page.
Still it should be easy to learn and to use and should allow me to keep the source readable. In this sense I also like txt2tags, since it mostly uses some very intuitive tags.
Can anybody recommend me something here?

keenerd

Package Maintainer (PM)

Registered: 2007-02-22

Posts: 647

Website

Re: Lightweight (humane) markup languages

Try wikipedia?  Most of these output HTML, which can be easily converted to your other formats.  (Fun fact:  you can simply rename a .html file to .doc, and Word will do the right thing with it.  Very handy for when people insist on a Word file.)

I'm a fan of Markdown.  It is based on the long standing conventions from Usenet and email.  It has most of your features.  It has good support for annotations.  There are extensions for tables.  I don't know how one could set the paragraph alignment, though someone could probably write an extension for it.

If you find a markup language you like, it would be trivially easily to make a basic text-file-to-whatever command line converter.

Also, why not LaTeX?  You can generally ignore all the features you won't use and make it as simple as you wish.  Valid reason here would be if you REALLY need doc output above all else.  Though you can convert TeX to html to doc.

edit:  Looking over your other posts, it seems you don't care about reading/loading any particular format, and that you don't care about a graphical WYSIWYG editor.  Correct me if I am wrong, but on top of the features listed, you want something that is simple, small and can output a microsoft friendly format.

Last edited by keenerd (2009-05-09 18:33:25)

ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

Re: Lightweight (humane) markup languages

>>Try wikipedia?  Most of these output HTML, which can be easily converted to your other formats.  (Fun fact:  you can simply rename a .html file to .doc, and Word will do the right thing with it.  Very handy for when people insist on a Word file.)
I've seen Wikipedia article (this is where I picked up the term of "lightweight markup languages", since English isn't my native language), just wanted a recommendation. Besides, many tools in Debian and/or Arch repos aren't even mentioned there. Good hint with Word, btw

>>Also, why not LaTeX?  You can generally ignore all the features you won't use and make it as simple as you wish.  Valid reason here would be if you REALLY need doc output above all else.  Though you can convert TeX to html to doc.
Well, to me, LaTeX source is not as readable as txt2tags or asciidoc source.

>>edit:  Looking over your other posts, it seems you don't care about reading/loading any particular format, and that you don't care about a graphical WYSIWYG editor.  Correct me if I am wrong, but on top of the features listed, you want something that is simple, small and can output a microsoft friendly format.
You got me right. But still, I have to be able to read doc and docx files (since I have to deal with them at work and at the university) as well as create files in MS Word supported format (other than plain text, since I have to follow the formatting requirements).

jcolinzheng

Member

From: Cambridge, MA

Registered: 2008-08-06

Posts: 50

Website

Re: Lightweight (humane) markup languages

I must recommend AsciiDoc (http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/), having tried almost every light markup language including txt2tags.
AsciiDoc can convert to RTF via the DocBook toolchain, and is great to write non-math stuff.

ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

Re: Lightweight (humane) markup languages

@jcolinzheng Yeah, I've also seen it. Still, the official guide looks more like a reference. Is there any good 101 introduction?