Testing Textile
Just testing out Dean Allen’s Textile, a Humane Web Text Generator. Previously, I’ve been using his Web Writing Applescripts for Tex-Edit Plus to clean up the HTML before publishing it via a web form. Now, I’ve cut out this extra step by adding the Textile PHP script to my includes folder so that I can simply call the ‘textile’ function as the post is submitted to the database. Expect over-zealous use of ordered/unordered lists as I throw ‘em in just for the fun of it.
7:54 am on 10 July 2003 :::
Jack Says:I love the Textile Movable Type plugin, and use the online version a fair bit, but the thing I don’t quite get about Textile is it’s increasing complexity:
table{border:1px solid black}.
|_. this|_. is|_. a|_. header|
< {background:gray}. |\2. this is|{background:red;width:200px}. a|^<>{height:200px}. row|
|this|<>{padding:10px}. is|^. another|(bob#bob). row|
I’d say the above is much more confusing, and less humane, than learning how to make a table in HTML…
8:37 am on 10 July 2003 :::
Matt Says:Yeah, I agree. I guess it depends on what level you want to use it at.
My main uses are to generate smart quotes, paragraph breaks and easy lists, and that’s pretty much it really.
10:34 am on 13 July 2003 :::
Dean Allen Says:>> I’d say the above is much more confusing, and less humane, than learning how to make a table in HTML…
Horseshit. The above is a deliberately complex and highly unlikely example, one showing Textile table handlers in a variety of uses.
And if you think a table derived thus:
|This|is|a|table|
|This|is|a|row|
is less confusing than one derived thus:
<table>
<tr><td>This</td><td>is</td><td>a</td><td>table</td></tr>
<tr><td>This</td><td>is</td><td>a</td><td>row</td></tr>
</table>
…then, well, feh.
12:49 pm on 16 July 2003 :::
Anonymous Says:>> Horseshit
That’s a bit stiff, Dean.
Yeah, I picked a particularly obscure example, but speaking as someone fairly familiar with HTML I find myself spewing it out like an automaton, to the extent that I get into trouble from time to time for submitting copy to my editors with HTML tags around words in place of the various in-house codes newspapers and magazines use for bold, italic and what have you. This means that when I use Textile for more complex formatting, I end up having to translate from HTML to Textile code in my head… in order to get HTML out. Obviously, this isn’t a fault with Textile, it’s just not suited to me when it comes to certain tasks.
Essentially, Textile seems to me to be growing into an alternate markup language that, while it saves oodles of time in terms of keystrokes, doesn’t seem any easier to learn than basic HTML. This is exactly what a non-HTML savvy friend of mine said when I suggested he use Textile to aid him in writing entries for the blog we kept together – he couldn’t see how it would help him when I’d already shown him how to make a link and enclose paragraphs in p tags.
That said, it’s bloody amazing! I’ve saved myself untold hours making interview transcripts ready for the web, and use it in its plugin incarnation every time I post to my weblog…