Textile (markup language)

Textile is a lightweight markup language that uses a text formatting syntax to convert plain text into structured HTML markup. Textile is used for writing articles, forum posts, readme documentation, and any other type of written content published online. Textile is a lightweight markup language that uses a text formatting syntax to convert plain text into structured HTML markup. Textile is used for writing articles, forum posts, readme documentation, and any other type of written content published online. Textile was developed by Dean Allen in 2002, which he billed as 'a humane web text generator' that enabled you to 'simply write'. Dean created Textile for use in Textpattern, the CMS he also developed about the same time. Textile is one of several lightweight markup languages to have influenced the development of Markdown. Textile was originally written in PHP (maintained as PHP-Textile), and has since been translated into Perl, Python (Python-Textile), Ruby, JavaScript (Textile-JS), and C#. A Java implementation used to exist called 'Textile-J', but it was merged into the Mylyn WikiText project. There is no standard nor a working specification at this time. However, there is a Textile 'organization' on GitHub that invites contributions toward the creation of a common specification across Textile implementations. Text marked-up with Textile converts into valid HTML when rendered in a web browser, and though it probably varies from one implementation type to another, an installation of Textile can be set for a Doctype Declaration of XHTML or HTML5, with XHTML being the default for backward compatibility. In the PHP implementation, for example, when using Textile's all-caps abbreviation syntax – AGE(A Given Example) – the result will render as an abbr element in HTML5 and as an acronym element in XHTML. Likewise, as of PHP version 3.5, if you use alignment markers in Textile's image syntax, HTML5 will get extra classes on the rendered img element, while XHTML remains with the align attribute.