Txt2tags User Guide

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The First Questions You May Have

This chapter is a txt2tags overview, that will introduce the program purpose and features.

What is it?

Txt2tags is a text formatting and conversion tool.

Txt2tags converts a plain text file with little marks, to any of the supported targets:

HTML document
XHTML document
SGML document
LaTeX document
UNIX man page
MagicPoint presentation
Wikipedia page (MediaWiki)
Google Wiki page
DokuWiki page
MoinMoin page
PageMaker 6.0 document
Plain Text (no marks)

Why should I use it?

You'll find txt2tags really useful if you:

Need to publish documents on different formats
Need to maintain updated documents on different formats
Write technical or manual documents
Don't know how to write a document on a certain format
Don't have a specific editor for a certain format
Want to use a simple text editor to update your documents

And the main motivation is:

Save time, writing contents and forgetting about formatting

Why is it a good choice among other tools?

Txt2tags has a very straight way of growing, following basic concepts. These are the highlights:

Source File Readable	Txt2tags marks are very simple, almost natural.
Target Document Readable	As the source file, the target document is also readable, with indentation and short lines.
Consistent Marks	Txt2tags marks are unique enough to fit at all kind of documents and don't be confused with the document contents.
Consistent Rules	As the marks, the rules that applies to them are tied to each other, there are no "exceptions" or "special cases".
Simple Structures	All the supported formatting are simple, with no extra-options or complicated behavior modifiers. A mark is just a mark, with no options at all.
Easy to Learn	With simple marks and readable source, the txt2tags learning curve is user friendly.
Nice Examples	The sample files included on the package gives real life examples of simple and over-complicated documents written for txt2tags.
Valuable Tools	The syntax files included on the package (for vim, emacs, nano and kate editors) help you write documents with no syntax errors.
Three User Interfaces	There is a Graphical Tk interface that is very user friendly, a Web interface to use it remotely or on the intranet, and a Command Line interface for power-users and scripting.
Scripting	With the full featured command line mode, an experienced user can automatize tasks and do post-editing on the converted files.
Download and Run / Multi-platform	Txt2tags is a single Python script. There is no need to compile it or download extra modules. So it runs nicely on *NIX, Linux, Windows and Macintosh machines.
Frequent Updates	The program has an active mailing list with users who suggest corrections and improvements. The author himself is an extensive user at home and at work, so the development won't stop briefly.

Do I have to pay for it?

Absolutely NO!

It's free, GPL licensed.

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