PlainType reference

This document describes the PlainType language that can be used to format and structure messages for the web.

Basic understanding

The PlainType language aims to keep the text readable, also with rather complex formatting and structuring. Messages are typed in plain text with no real-time formatting support by the editor application, i.e. the web browser. To give the message a consistent and clean look, multiple subsequent spaces are merged into a single one. Single line breaks are removed. You can start a new paragraph by inserting one or more empty lines in the text. To achieve emphasis, formatting or advanced structuring like quotations, lists and captions, read on for more language features.

Emphasis

The probably most-used feature of a formatting language is emphasis. PlainType supports three levels of emphasis. Usually, the first level shows text italic, the second bold and the third both. Emphasis syntax is similar to many Wiki systems like e.g. Wikipedia. You can use these emphasis levels in the following way by adding apostrophes around the text to be emphasised. One has no effect, two are for normal emphasis, three are for strong emphasis and four or more (the exact count does not matter) are for very strong emphasis. Note that these are multiple single quote characters (apostrophes), not double quotes.

What you type: What you see:
This is regular text. This is regular text.
This is ''normal emphasis'' text. This is normal emphasis text.
This is '''strong emphasis''' text. This is strong emphasis text.
This is ''''very strong emphasis'''' text. This is very strong emphasis text.

Underlining is not an emphasis, it is an uncommon text decoration. Because underlining is the default way to display hyperlinks, it should not be used for text that is not a hyperlink. See below for underlining text anyway.

Hyperlinks

There are different ways to use hyperlinks. Fully-qualifying URLs can be typed without any special care. They are detected by their "http:" or "www." beginning. Several link protocols are known and converted to the appropriate link.

To use hyperlinks with a different link label (the actual text that can be clicked) or to include uncommon or special characters in the link URL, use the following syntax:

What you type: What you see:
[[http://domain.com]] http://domain.com
[[http://domain.com My own website!]] My own website!
[[http://domain.com/query?special=1+2+3]] http://domain.com/query?special=1+2+3
[[http://domain.com/query?special=1+2+3 My own website with a query!]] My own website with a query!
Look at [[http://domain.com my own website]]! Look at my own website!

Images and other media

Images are placed in the same way as hyperlinks. The PlainType processor knows that it is an image from the ending of the URL. Known image formats are ".png", ".jpg" and ".gif". You can either simply type the image's URL or use the [[...]] notation and optionally give the image an alternative and tooltip text that can be seen if images are not loaded or the resource is no longer available. The image is always a link to the URL at the same time.

Quotation

Quoting other people or sources works the e-mail way. You can display a line of your message as quotation by adding a "> " at the beginning. Multiple subsequent lines with this "quotation mark" are combined into a single quotation block. You can use quotations inside quotations, i.e. deeper level quotations, by typing additional ">" characters. No space is required among them, only between the last ">" and the contents of the line there must be at least one space character.

All formatting and structuring methods can be used in a quotation block. The other way around does not always work, for example quotations cannot be used inside tables.

Lists

Lists look much like they are used in an environment that does not support text formatting. To start a list with an item, just put an asterisk (*) at the beginning of the line. The next line with an asterisk is another list item. Although there is no need to break the line manually, you can do so and still keep the same list item by nut using an asterisk in the following line but indenting it with at least one space character.

The asterisk shows unordered list items. Ordered, i.e. numbered list items can be used with the hash (#) character instead. Numbering in a list always begins with one (1.). You need to pay attention to not start a new list when you need consecutive numbers. See below for using line breaks in list items.

You can nest lists one inside another by using multiple asterisk or hash characters instead of one. Different list types can be mixed.

What you type: What you see:
* First list item
* Second list item
*# Sublist item with the number one.
*# Sublist item with the number two.
   Continued over the next line
* Third list item
  • First list item
  • Second list item
    1. Sublist item with the number one.
    2. Sublist item with the number two. Continued over the next line
  • Third list item

Text the precedes or follows a list item and that is not indented by space or a list item itself will be treated like in a separate paragraph. It has the same effect as typing an empty line between that text and the first/last list item.

Tables

Tables are specified one row per line. Each line begins and ends with a pipe character (vertical bar, "|"), which is also used to separate each table cell. If the text content of a single cell is too large to fit in a single line in the browser display, the text is wrapped as usual. No paragraphs and no lists or nested tables can be used.

What you type: What you see:
|First row, first cell|First row, second cell|
|Second row, first cell|Second row, second cell|
||This is an empty cell|
First row, first cellFirst row, second cell
Second row, first cellSecond row, second cell
This is an empty cell

Other block-level structuring

Captions

Other text formatting

Other features