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
DocBook document
LaTeX document
Lout document
UNIX man page
MagicPoint presentation
Creole 1.0 document
Wikipedia page (MediaWiki)
Google Wiki page
PmWiki page
DokuWiki page
MoinMoin page
PageMaker 6.0 document
AsciiDoc document
ASCII Art text
Plain Text (no marks)

Why should I use it?

You'll find txt2tags really useful if you:

Need to publish documents in different formats
Need to maintain updated documents in different formats
Write technical documents or guides
Don't know how to write a document in a specific format
Don't have an editor for a specific 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	The target document is also readable, with indentation and spacing.
Consistent Marks	Txt2tags marks are simple symbols, designed to be unique enough to don't mix up 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 documents written for txt2tags.
Valuable Tools	The syntax files included on the package help you to write documents with no syntax errors.
Three User Interfaces	There is a user friendly Graphical interface, a handy Web interface easy to install in intranets 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 Macs.
Mature	First released in 2001, txt2tags is now a mature program with years of improvements and bug fixes, extensive documentation, translations and an loyal user base.

Do I have to pay for it?

Absolutely NO!

It's free, GPL licensed.

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