Forgeot Eric
2011-09-25 08:29:32 UTC
Hello,
every day I discover new cool applications from the Open-Source community, but it's often that I think they miss features for being txt2tags-friendly. It can be for example text processor without txt2tags syntax highlight, or php/wiki applications without txt2tags support.
Here is a list of some of those apps:
- FocusWriter: http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
- Google Etherpad: http://etherpad.org/
- Wikka: http://wikkawiki.org/
There could / should also be support for txt2tags in popular blogging tools / CMS, such as Wordpress, Drupal etc.
With the current "WikiWar", everyone believes one own syntax is the best so it's difficult to find a consensus. When Diaspora designed their formatting rules, they didn't think to txt2tags. Instead they used the not logical *italic*, **bold**:
http://diasporial.com/tutorials/formatting-text
With my limited knowledge in programming languages, I've worked a bit on the integration of txt2tags into some other projects, but it could be much more improved :
- Kate (syntax highlighter)
- Geany (scintilla)
- PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Txt2tags
Some people have also designed cool tools:
- Plone: http://plone.org/products/collective.transform.txt2tags
- Tiddlywiki: http://wiki.txt2tags.org/index.php/Main/TiddlywikiPlugin
For FocusWriter and Etherpad, I'd really like to be able to get the "rich" edit feature with txt2tags syntax instead. I've opened a request on Etherpad tracker: https://github.com/ether/pad/issues/271
And I'd really like to get a decent navigation within headings (titles) when editing text and designing documents, there is such a navigation with geany, but no folding, and there is the folding but not the navigation with kate.
For Android phone, there is no support for the txt2tags syntax. I think the opensource Jota Editor would be a good candidate for this: https://market.android.com/details?id=jp.sblo.pandora.jota
Here are some additional ideas for helping the use of txt2tags:
1/
I know the good widespread of markdown is also because of its various implementations (I'm talking about the syntax, not about extra features such as postproc, macros and such)
Especially useful is the php implementation (http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/) which apparently make it available without modifications into:
- Drupal: http://drupal.org/project/markdown
- PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension
- Wordpress: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/markdown-for-wordpress-and-bbpress/
Such a tool would be a killer feature for the txt2tags syntax!
I don't think I could personally write this php module, but it could be a great project (and probably not that difficult) for anyone fluent in php :)
2/
When using php and web applications, it can be daunting for newcomers and average users to read and write wiki code, even for simple and logical syntax such as the txt2tags one (it's the general feedback I've got, unfortunately)
Formatting tools such as http://etxt2tags.appspot.com/ can help, but the wiki syntax is still visible, and the output formating is not. Some wysiwyg can be utterly annoying when they compose bad html (especially in CMS), but they can be useful as well. The txt2tags syntax, being simple and light, wouldn't be diverted like the html is, so it could be a great addition to be able to format and display wysiwyg as a helping tool.
I've seen the roundcube webmail (http://roundcube.net) is embedding such a tool, and it's easy to use.
Rednotebook is using a trick I like the most: it's mixing the wiki syntax (it remains educational for people so they can slowly learn the code) with a wysiwyg-like display, so people understand better the code:
http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
The wiki code is even greyed so it won't interfere too much with the display, yet it remains visible.
In the kate and geany txt editors, it looks a bit like this (Loading Image...
)
It would be really useful for web forms (in addition to the first point), but I don't know how it can be possible to implement this.
every day I discover new cool applications from the Open-Source community, but it's often that I think they miss features for being txt2tags-friendly. It can be for example text processor without txt2tags syntax highlight, or php/wiki applications without txt2tags support.
Here is a list of some of those apps:
- FocusWriter: http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
- Google Etherpad: http://etherpad.org/
- Wikka: http://wikkawiki.org/
There could / should also be support for txt2tags in popular blogging tools / CMS, such as Wordpress, Drupal etc.
With the current "WikiWar", everyone believes one own syntax is the best so it's difficult to find a consensus. When Diaspora designed their formatting rules, they didn't think to txt2tags. Instead they used the not logical *italic*, **bold**:
http://diasporial.com/tutorials/formatting-text
With my limited knowledge in programming languages, I've worked a bit on the integration of txt2tags into some other projects, but it could be much more improved :
- Kate (syntax highlighter)
- Geany (scintilla)
- PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Txt2tags
Some people have also designed cool tools:
- Plone: http://plone.org/products/collective.transform.txt2tags
- Tiddlywiki: http://wiki.txt2tags.org/index.php/Main/TiddlywikiPlugin
For FocusWriter and Etherpad, I'd really like to be able to get the "rich" edit feature with txt2tags syntax instead. I've opened a request on Etherpad tracker: https://github.com/ether/pad/issues/271
And I'd really like to get a decent navigation within headings (titles) when editing text and designing documents, there is such a navigation with geany, but no folding, and there is the folding but not the navigation with kate.
For Android phone, there is no support for the txt2tags syntax. I think the opensource Jota Editor would be a good candidate for this: https://market.android.com/details?id=jp.sblo.pandora.jota
Here are some additional ideas for helping the use of txt2tags:
1/
I know the good widespread of markdown is also because of its various implementations (I'm talking about the syntax, not about extra features such as postproc, macros and such)
Especially useful is the php implementation (http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/) which apparently make it available without modifications into:
- Drupal: http://drupal.org/project/markdown
- PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension
- Wordpress: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/markdown-for-wordpress-and-bbpress/
Such a tool would be a killer feature for the txt2tags syntax!
I don't think I could personally write this php module, but it could be a great project (and probably not that difficult) for anyone fluent in php :)
2/
When using php and web applications, it can be daunting for newcomers and average users to read and write wiki code, even for simple and logical syntax such as the txt2tags one (it's the general feedback I've got, unfortunately)
Formatting tools such as http://etxt2tags.appspot.com/ can help, but the wiki syntax is still visible, and the output formating is not. Some wysiwyg can be utterly annoying when they compose bad html (especially in CMS), but they can be useful as well. The txt2tags syntax, being simple and light, wouldn't be diverted like the html is, so it could be a great addition to be able to format and display wysiwyg as a helping tool.
I've seen the roundcube webmail (http://roundcube.net) is embedding such a tool, and it's easy to use.
Rednotebook is using a trick I like the most: it's mixing the wiki syntax (it remains educational for people so they can slowly learn the code) with a wysiwyg-like display, so people understand better the code:
http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
The wiki code is even greyed so it won't interfere too much with the display, yet it remains visible.
In the kate and geany txt editors, it looks a bit like this (Loading Image...
)It would be really useful for web forms (in addition to the first point), but I don't know how it can be possible to implement this.