Take a time to write a nice testimonial telling your experience on txt2tags. Other people can choose to use it (or not) based on your opinion.
- Where do you use it?
- It fits your needs?
- Have you tried other similar tools?
- Your site is powered by t2t?
Please do use the English language, so the world can read your opinion. It will be nice if you append your country name just after your name.
If you have…
- a bug report or suggestion to make, please submit an issue.
- questions on the program use please post them on the mailing list.
txt2tags blog 
Looks like someone finally generated a decent text to markup converter. txt2tags renders to SGML (linuxdoc), HTML, PageMaker (??), Unix Man, MagicPoint, and MoinMoin (a Python Wikki clone). Too bad they don’t have one for DocBook….
Might be worth trying for simple manuals on mini projects if you don’t want to be launching Word or DreamWeaver all the time.
In my search for something (*anything*!) to replace MS .doc for our internal and contract documents, I came across txt2tags, and I like what I saw so far.
It resembles my old favourite, "plain2" (a completely plain-text based tags-free document formatter, which unfortunately worked with a Japanese TeX distribution only, and is now deceased), and looks less intrusive than sdf, aft, aptconvert, and others.
Nice piece of software. Simple and effective.
Thanks for txt2tags, great job! Previously I used reStructuredText in my documents, but I think txt2tags is much simpler to use with (almost) the same functionality.
I am a long time user of txt2tags. Originally I had a very simple
script I wrote to do something in the line of txt2tags, but I did away with
it as soon as I got to know txt2tags. It is a fantastic tool, simple
yet powerfull.
I use it to write all my pages and I have two websites powered by
txt2tags: http://www.dicas-L.unicamp.br
and http://www.idph.net. A third site is on the
way.
Thanks a lot for txt2tags :-)
This is a great little program. I like that it is very lightweight and the documentation fits on one page. I use it for programmer API documentation, and have gotten a couple other developers started using it too.
Small negative: I didn’t like that there were user-visible changes between 1.x and 2.0 that obsoleted my old docs. Please don’t do that again if/when there are other major updates.
Thanks for making this program freely available!
Hi William, in the package there’s a script called ‘t2tconv’ to convert your current files to the new syntax, just run the files through it. I really avoid changes in the markup, but this time they were necessary, sorry for the trouble!
Simplicity is all and txt2tags is simple and powerfull.
I investigated docbook, wiki’s, plain text, rtf, restructured text… and txt2tags is the winner.
It works out of the box, is simple, and is written in my preferred language after Italian and English… Python, of course…
;-)
I love txt2tags, because it prevents me from writing HTML-Code by hand. And it is the only way I would ever write a man-page.
I use it for several very easy and technical Webpages, including my homepage.
Thx for it! Christof
PS: There was a conversion-tool for the 2.0 comp-break, in case some people didn’t realize.
Thanks for your work!
The Docu Team from OpenPHPNuke Content Management System is currently switching the whole documentation from LaTex to txt2tags. Recently the experimental german docu got online. Wrote some english words about it at http://doc.openphpnuke.info
A wonderful thing when open source meets open source :-)
Best wishes,
manne
Docu Team OPN
great! But it would be greater if it was
possible to create more than one html page, I mean
if it would be possible to create many linked html pages
Today I spent some time playing with txt2tags, a tool for filtering simple text markup into many different formats, including Latex and XHTML which I use on day to day basis. It indeed takes no more than 5 mins to get used to the markup syntax and generated files compile flawlessly. Seems it will be a great time saver for my thesis writing.
We launched our site yesterday. All the user manuals/white papers/admin guides were created with t2t as the source.
Check out
http://www.wandisco.com/techpubs/cvs-docs.htm
and
http://www.wandisco.com/techpubs/sdk-docs.htm
Before settling on t2t, I really looked at several commercial and open src doc publishing solutions including FrameMaker/WebWorks, MS Word + Html, Pdf Plugins. None was flexible enough like t2t.
You don’t see the downloaded bits but our product now ships with UNIX man pages, text files, pdf all generated from t2t
sources.
TXT2TAGS is the shit you want, buy now! It’s free! And it will allow you to write once, use for anything – like Java, but for text. I have been using this format for my text for years and I will probably depend on it forever.
There is no shit as good as this shit out there, this is the good shit you can use with anything, Word for Windows and other bloat like it is the shtty shit you can not use for anything at all
Good work!It is so flexible and simple that I can write scripts to fit my need. Thanks, guy!
txt2tags is THE defition of KIS*S*. congrats!
I have just come across txt2tags and it seems to me a god-sent gift. Thank you.
I stumbled across txt2tags from a post on the Archlinux forum (Here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=10281&highlight=txt2tags).
I had been looking for something like this, and was more or less just about to write a tool like it myself. Thank god I found this amazing tool before I started. Keep up the good work!
This is great idea… Kenny Vadas and more
txt2tags is a really great program. However, it looks like the –css-sugar option could use a little more sugar. It would be nice if headers generated their own divs, so that different divs could be styled differently (ie, appendixes versus footnotes versus bibliography versus main text)
Otherwise, great program!
I’ve been working on a personal project since the beginning of the month which has required me to write close to 2000 words each day. Because of the huge amount of stuff I’m writing, before I started the project I had to do some research into the tools I should use. I had a couple of requirements for my search. Here they are:
Ease of use:
– I want to be able to take the results of what I’ve written and easily convert it to another format.
– When I’m writing I don’t want to be distracted with formating of the text itself. I’ll be too tempted to change the font, correct mistakes, of something else. The goal is word count, and those issues will keep me from the goal.
– I need to have simple syntax to indicate chapters, bold, italic, and other such formating issues. I don’t want to have to type stuff like "<b>" before or after something I to formatting. ‘<‘ and ” look ugly in a document. The same goes for HTML/XML tags: they make a plain text document look ugly and hard to read.
Portability:
– I have to be able to take the entire document with me wherever I go. And be able to work on it wherever I am.
– I want to be able to use the same editor on Linux, Windows, or my PPC.
Publishing/Formating:
– On occasion I will want to create something close to a hard copy (like a PDF). The process for doing so should be easy.
– When I’m finally done with the document, I want to be able to convert it into PDF, RTF, DOC, or some other format with out having to go through some huge involved process.
With those requirements, I’ve settled on the folloing for my project: txt2tags as the text format. Simple, easy, and it can be converted to just about anything I want with the addition of two other tools.
txt2tags doesn’t require any special customization. It just works. I don’t even need python installed since I’m using the compiled windows exe. That’s definitely an advantage python has over Java…
Greetings,
Here’s my 2-cents wishlist:
1st cent:
TeX support, at least “ and ”
for left- and right-double quotes
(&ldquo; and &rdquo; in HTML).
Some people are fussy about appearance of quotes!
Then there’s "–" for endash and "—" for emdash.
2nd cent:
Tags for meta data with data separated by blank
lines. For example, this paragraph is meta data
due to the presence of __2ND_CENT__ and delimited
by blanks lines as seen above and below.
Those 2 cents come from this real-world project,
Volumes 1 through 24 at this time:
http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/
Have a look:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/textfile.htm
Have a look:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/tx2guide.htm
Have a look:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/tx2sample.htm
-R. Cymbala
lia@marxists.org
Cacilda!! Esse programa é simplesmente genial!!!!! Melhor que o LyX para a maioria dos trabalhos
Damn it!!! This program is simply the best!!!! Better than LyX most of the time
Uma sugestão: que tal se o txt2tags pudesse gerar uma saída no formato do Lyx, de forma que até usuários burros (como eu) pudessem fazer a formatação fina do documento final?
A sugestion: how about if the txt2tags output to Lyx format, so even dumb users (like me) could fine format the final document.
Excelente programa!
Me insentivou a estudar Python! :)
Estarei utilizando o txt2tags para criar websites e documentação dos meus programas. =D
À propósito, como estou iniciando em Python, queria saber como vocês fazem para gerar um executável (.exe no windows) à partir do código em python?
Aguardo resposta.
Obrigado
Hey, nice program! Could use some better support for tex/latex, but it’s pretty great anyway. Thanks!
Great thing.
I frequently scan the net for a tool to convert text into nearly every useful format, with markup wich is easy to remember. For me, Txt2Tags outperforms every other markup I know. That’s why I put up my Homepage in it http://kazam.de (Only in german, sorry).
It’s cool because I can use it on my Mac, writing in VIM, exporting with a simple command, it’s small and based upon the less is more philosophy.
I use this great tool for filling out sowftware release forms / template (with tables) as vim is easier to use than MS Word. Currently using %%date as date appears in several places in that table as well as in the filename
starting to test %!postproc(html): @@ <br> for linebreaks in cells
Greetings,
Here’s my 2-cents wishlist:
1st cent:
TeX support, at least “ and ” for left- and right-double quotes (&ldquo; and &rdquo; in HTML). Some people are fussy about appearance of quotes! Then there’s "–" for endash and "—" for emdash.
2nd cent:
Tags for meta data with data separated by blank lines. For example, this paragraph is meta data due to the presence of __2ND_CENT__ and delimited by blanks lines as seen above and below.
Those 2 cents come from this real-world project, Volumes 1 through 24 at this time: http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/
Have a look: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/textfile.htm
Have a look: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/tx2guide.htm
Have a look: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/howto/tx2sample.htm
-R. Cymbala
lia@marxists.org
could we please change the magicpoint output to slidy, or s5, or operashow type output? thanks
Hello,
I have created a Service Menu to facilitate the use of KTxt2tags.
With this simple file when doing click with the right button of the mouse in a file whose content is flat text can be initiated the application to process it.
I hope is of utility.
It is possible to be found here: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=50459
Excuse me for my bad English.
Greetings.
David Area
while its a cool tool
i got 3 problems with it
1.its not a library (and using subprocessis is slow an sucks)
2. there is no block kind wich allows callbacks with parameters (passing inline code blocks to pygments would rock)
3. its gpl – wich means if i use it as lib my tool has to be gpl, too – i’d sugest to use lgpl to allow other licensing models for library usage
I just discovered this nice tool. It would be nice to be able to parametrize input formats, for example to use * instead – for the bulleted list items, etc. This in order to be able to parse files from other wiki formats (I have about 7 tousands files in Kwiki, wxWikiServer and some other wiki formats). I will see if I can grasp how to hack the original script (my Python is quite rusty) to adopt these slightly different input formats. Thanks for the great tool, anyway.
Sugiro adicionar um recurso de quebra de linha ao txt2tags.
Todos os arquivos de saída suportam a quebra de linha e
atualmente só dá pra fazer com o postproc.
Resposta a Frederico Wagner.
Para compilar um script Python vc pode usar o cx_Freeze.
http://www.python.net/crew/atuining/cx_Freeze/
Great. Excelent. Thanks.
About 18 years ago I built something similar, but far more simple and without html.
I should have discovered this tool years ago!
Now I can finally remove all these word processors, which are meant for short secretary letters, not for serious stuff.
This tool is based on the original UNIX filter concept. It does not try to provide all functionality. This makes it easier to detect and fix errors.
No I can be sure that my indexing en toc’s work, which I can not say of some other word processors around.
Thanks again!
Questions/Suggestions:
If I use –no-headers, why does it still eats up my first three lines? Maybe an extra option: –ignore-headers?
It would be nice to introduce a list-stop indicator. I always forget to add the 2 lines, so for me it would be better to indicate an extra list stop element.
I would like to use the TAB key to seperate table columns, now I have to use three characters: " | ". For me it is enough to specify the alignment only for the entire column.
Now i’m impressed!
Although I discoverd txt2tags only 10 minutes ago, I am sure to install this on all my computers. Including my Zaurus PDA.
I’ve just stumbled upon these beautyful pages and am heavily impressed by the power and simplicity of this nifty tool. Altough I have been a die-hard EMACS fan, the joyful reading through these pages led me to the decision to switch to vim+txt2tags. Now I’m eager to dive into this amazing simplicity ASAP:)
Thanks for providing this fantastic tool to the community!
Is there any way to comment out lines of a txt2tags file?
this is perfect!
i hope you keep developing it further and maybe some day i can contribute something.
thank you so much for this neat piece of software!
I love what you guys have done. I decided to re-do my site and came across this. I did a write-up on my site that explains the process I used with txt2tags: http://neidetcher.com/static_site_creation.html
From your docs:
"It’s free, GPL, open source, public domain, ."
GPL and public domain are not interchangeable. If you want more people to use your libraries, try dropping the GPL license in favor of an MIT or BSD style license.
Just the perfect tool!
It’s hard enough to write code, now at last I found a tool to write the docs, which often takes longer than coding itself!
Q: Have you tried other similar tools???
A: Oh yes, all of them but .. "nothing compares 2 u"
Why not support in html for <br />
Hey there,
I absolutely love this program and use it often. I use it mostly to create cheat sheets for myself and to write web pages.
It definitely fits my needs and it becomes more fun to use the longer I use it.
I haven’t tried other similar tools, but I researched all the available tools and this looked like the best one. Once I tried it, I didn’t feel a need to look elsewhere.
My site isn’t fully powered by txt2tags, but it sure uses a lot of it!
Since it’s so powerful, I can’t remember every bit of markup, so I created a cheat sheet of **almost** everything you could ever want to use txt2tags to accomplish. It’s so useful for me that I figured others might enjoy it as well. It’s available at:
http://littlergirl.googlepages.com/txt2tagsCheatSheet.html
Thank you for a wonderful program that’s a joy to work with!
Hi, my website is the most new children, I recently enter to the family. See txt2tags in action here:
http://www.carloscosta.org
Thanks for this excelent tool =)
Txt2tags online produces:
…
Why a closing CENTER tag? Where is the opening tag?
This is not valid HTML.
In my last comments the HTML tags are lost. I try again, but the angle brackets replaced by (..):
(!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN")
(HTML)
(HEAD)
(META NAME="generator" CONTENT="http://txt2tags.sf.net")
(/HEAD)(BODY BGCOLOR="white" TEXT="black")
(FONT SIZE="4")
(/FONT)(/CENTER)
Thanks Thomas, this bug is now fixed in txt2tags online and in SVN.
First, thanks for the program. A few days ago I sent a patch to the author, which allows for multiline bold and italics, but I’ve not received any response. In case anybody is interested, you can get my changed version here:
http://shufang.net/code/txt2tags
It is possible that this version will break something that used to work before, so please check the output well before using it for real!
Greetings! A.
Thank you! x 1000 for this very nice application! It really amazes me how much it changed my workflow now (for good!). I’ll recommend it to everyone!
Hi there,
You’ve developed a great tool. After messing with it for a while I realized that txt2tags is not as simple as I had expected–it’s a powerful piece of software.
Great job. Keep it up!
Does txt2tags support mathematical formulae in Latex and (X)HTML??
Not natively, but you can use filters. Example: http://txt2tags.sourceforge.net/tips.html#tex-greek
Txt2tags version 2.6 was just released, and with its new ”tagged” mark you can insert formulas or any other tags directly in the source file. More info
Cool site.
Isn’t it time to update the reference to "sgmltools" in User Guide? The thing is dead and obsoleted several times over, and walking the succession of dead forks to find out that the current successor is called "linuxdoc-tools" costed me a whole hour of googling.
A less determined user would just believe SGML output useless on seeing the dead link to http://www.sgmltools.org/
Thanks for your time and research wjaguar, I’ve just updated the User Guide (r67)
I have been looking at a lot of different lightweight markup systems recently and I really liked the look of yours. It seemed to meet my needs for producing XHTML pages of articles for my webiste. I installed it on Windows XP and tried out some of the sample code you supplied. But I found to my dismay that it only partially works.
For instance. I entered this code:
= My Title =
A __paragraph__ with **bold** and //italic//.
Today is 03/01/09 21:02:53.
Here is a nice pic: [img/t2tpowered.png].
| John | 33 | Male |
| Mary | 19 | Female |
and this is the XHTML it produced…
= My Title =
= My Title =
A __paragraph__ with **bold** and //italic//.
John
33
Male
Mary
19
Female
It’s very odd as the table has been processed OK but the in-line formatting is untranslated. When I asked it to produce plain text it generated a file with the same markup as the source! I wonder if something is wrong with the installation.
I’d be grateful for help as I really want to use the system.
Rob Wheeler
Faversham, UK
Thank you for txt2tags. It is really nice and easy to use.
Thank you for txt2tags!
I believe that wiki-like markups are like text editors: there are many of them and most of them are very good. However one needs to settle on a single choice that meets all (or most) of their needs and learn it thoroughly to become productive. Once I realized that and became a VIM expert, I haven’t looked back and the benefits just keep coming in.
I feel the same way about txt2tags. After searching here and there, I found your gem and decided that this was **the** markup tool for me. I am glad I did! The more I learn about your tool, the more I like it.
Thanks for an excellent tool and a special thanks for backing it up with excellent documentation!
Hi, master.
Is there a plan to support for ConTEXt Minimals? I think it’s easier for simple text than LaTex.
I introduced my 11-yr-old son to txt2tags. He wants to know if he can insert .AVI files for videos.
There isn’t a mark for videos, but since txt2tags-2.6 you can insert arbitrary HTML code using the ”tagged” mark.
Thanks guys, I find txt2tags a very useful tool.
Here is a little suggestion for improvement:
Because I frequently want to control line breaks without starting a new paragraph I use the following
% insert a line break for all colons at line end. To prevent this, append a blank
%!postproc(html): ‘\.$’ .
Unfortunately this only applies for HTML.
Do you think it could be a good idea to make this the default behavior for all formats? That’s what I would appreciate.
kind regards
Andreas
Thank you very much for this great tool !
I have been using it for 2 or 3 years I think, and I use it now nearly every day for personal notes and even for documentation (as soon as I am not forced to use Word !). I nearly never use LaTeX anymore since txt2tags is enough for most of my tasts. My main target language are LaTeX for PDF output, and (X)HTML.
I configured it to add few things (footnotes, …), and I am about to add translation of LaTeX math formulas to MathML. I’ll let you know…
I think I will soon also use it to write notes on my new tablet, synchronize the files with my home cloud (with rsync), and generate html to update my web site through ssh : so easy with textual files and no GUI to go in your way.
Thanks again (and sorry for my english…)
Anne (France).
A complete OpenSource documentation Example by LaTex and txt2tags
Hello,
I would like to present an open source project for a common trace and logging layer in distributed environments. The documentation for the bash component is completely based on txt2tags and LaTex. This generates HTML, PDF and MAN by modules in a multi-language environment.
The main project UnifiedSessionsManager comprises about 500+ modules in txt2tags and generates about 1000+ pages of documentation in the formats HTML, PDF, and MAN. All from common sources.
The build is based on make files.
– http://sourceforge.net/projects/utalm/
– https://github.com/ArnoCan/utalm
– http://www.unifiedsessionsmanager.us/en/downloads.html
Possibly this is of interest for the development of tags2tags too, the project provides a trace and loggin library e.g. for bash, soon available are Python C++. Additional going to follow are: Ruby, Java, JavaScript, SQL, PowerShell,…
The license is Apache-2.0.
WKR
Arno-Can Uestuensoez