Minor version 2.3.1 released

After more than a year of silence, there is a new txt2tags version out!

It’s a minor release, mostly related to the Style option (–style or %!style). Now you can specify two or more CSS files for an HTML/XHTML page, or modules for LaTeX. Example:

    txt2tags -t html --style main.css --style fancy.css site.t2t

The –css-inside option was also improved to support multiple files and now warns when the CSS file is not found.

    <!-- Included main.css -->
    <STYLE TYPE="text/css">
    ...
    </STYLE>

    <!-- CSS include failed for fancy.css -->

A very ancient bug was fixed. It was introduced on version 0.7 (from 2002!) and remained unnoticed until recently. The automatic adding of protocol (like http://) was not working for uppercased URLs.

    $ echo -e "\\nWWW.FOO.COM" | txt2tags-2.3 -o- -H -t html -
    <P>
    <A HREF="WWW.FOO.COM">WWW.FOO.COM</A>
    </P>

    $ echo -e "\\nWWW.FOO.COM" | txt2tags-2.3.1 -o- -H -t html -
    <P>
    <A HREF="http://WWW.FOO.COM">WWW.FOO.COM</A>
    </P>

Since nobody noticed the bug before, this fix is invisible :)

Get the new code at the download page, under the Minor Releases section.

New “Release Early” Policy

I’ve always waited until many new features and bug fixes were done to then release a new version of txt2tags. The more changes, the better.

But experience show me that preparing big releases is a time consuming task, and it takes even longer when the period between versions becomes large. Since the latest version 2.3 was released 13 months ago, you can imagine how scared I am :)

We need change and we need it fast, Joey said.

Starting today, besides de KISS Principle, the program will also follow the “Release Early, Release Often” Principle. Minor releases will now be part of the project.

And when I said now, I mean --now! See next post.

New green site

We’ve had enough of that gray/blue scary site, don’t we? The new txt2tags site is green and was redesigned from scratch.

The problem with the old site (besides its ugliness) was that the menu only appeared in the main page. You follow any link, the menu vanishes. Don’t blame me, I’m a programmer, not a webmaster :)

But this year I’ve learned some web things and the site was improved. Now we have an uniform layout for all pages, with a top header, a menu on the right and a little footer. The light colors are following the Web 2.0 hype. Oh, well…

What really matters is that the site is 100% powered by txt2tags.

It’s a showcase of what you can do with the program. All the sources are available and commented, so everybody can study and copy them.

There are some magic involved, using smart filters (PreProc & PostProc), many includes and lots of CSS wizardry. But the outline is simple, using centralized files included by all pages:

• config.t2t: The default options and filters, the URL database.
• menu.t2t: The menu links.
• footer.t2t: The page footer with modification time and link to the sources.

So when creating a new page, all you have to do is:

    My Dogs Page
    Everything about dogs

    %!includeconf: config.t2t
    %!include: menu.t2t

    Content goes here.

    %!include: footer.t2t

On the CSS file you position everything, set sizes and colors. That nice square that points to the current active link on the menu is also made on the CSS.

Now everything is easier to change, user navigation is natural and all the HTML is valid. If you’ve found all that interesting, feel free to use the txt2tags site sources as a starting point for your own site.

By no means I’m a web guru. Any comments about the new site, suggestions and improvements are very welcome!

5 years of txt2tags

At July 26, 2001 the txt2tags version 0.1 was released.

It had six targets (txt, html, sgml, pm6, mgp, moin), command line was the only interface (with just one option -t), a few supported structures and marks, no translations, poor documentation, a dozen users, 461 lines of code.

Today its code is 10 times bigger, we have many options and features, translations to 10+ languages, extensive documentation, a great world-wide user base and a nice team of contributors.

I’m happy to notice that even getting this far, txt2tags continues to honor its very first and most important goal: be simple. The markup keeps being easy and minimalist. The advanced features are available if you need them, but aren’t required for the daily use.

The program also entered on a mature stage. The latest version was released about a year ago and no important bugs were found on this period. In this case, no news is good news :)

But wait, news are coming soon. Hold your breath for the next posts.

Thanks everybody for your support on my little project for all these years. Let’s hope in 2011 I can write a post called “10 years and we’re still here” :)

Blog? Blog.

Hi there.

This is the new place to stay in touch with the latest news about the txt2tags project. Releases, files, documents, translations, site updates.

The good old do-it-yourself news/RSS by hand worked until today, but using a Blog system like WordPress, we get some advantages:

• Feeds (RSS) with HTML code. The old “by hand” was text-only.
• Automatic feeds for: whole blog, each category, each post, all comments, comments by post.
• Permanent (readable) URL for each post, important to keep things organized and easy to find.
• Multiple categories (tags) to mark each post, so you can monitor just want interests you.
• And more.

Talking about feeds, subscribe to the txt2tags blog now!

But my favorite feature is having comments for each post. Now everybody can talk and contribute, changing the monologue to a nice conversation.

It’s up and running. Enjoy!

Note: Here are the older news, just in case.