Filename extensions .textile Type of format Markup language | Developed by Dean Allen Open format? yes | |
Initial release December 26, 2002; 14 years ago (2002-12-26) Latest release 3.5.5 (PHP)
(December 20, 2013; 3 years ago (2013-12-20)) | ||
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.
Contents
History
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.
The first documented (but so far unofficial) wordmark and logo mark was created for Textile in 2015, the repository for which has since become part of the Textile organization on GitHub. The mark has since started being used as a file icon in text editors, including Atom, which supports the .textile file type.
Programming language implementations
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 Mylin WikiText project.
Standardization
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.
Doctype support
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.
Syntax usage
Various resources are available for learning and using Textile:
In addition to its suite of syntax usage, Textile automatically inserts character entity references for apostrophes, opening and closing single and double quotation marks, ellipses and em dashes, to name a few.
Licensing
Textile is distributed under a BSD-style license and is included with, or available as a plugin for, several content-management systems.
Software and services
Various projects use (or have used) Textile: