RedCloth

RedCloth is a Ruby library for converting Textile and/or Markdown into HTML. You can use either format, intermingled or separately. You can also extend RedCloth to honor your own custom text stylings.

RedCloth users are encouraged to use Textile if they are generating HTML and to use Markdown if others will be viewing the plain text.

What is Textile?

Textile is a simple formatting style for text documents, loosely based on some HTML conventions.

Sample Textile Text

h2. This is a title

h3. This is a subhead

This is a bit of paragraph.

bq. This is a blockquote.

Writing Textile

A Textile document consists of paragraphs. Paragraphs can be specially formatted by adding a small instruction to the beginning of the paragraph.

h[n].   Header of size [n].
bq.     Blockquote.
#       Numeric list.
*       Bulleted list.

Quick Phrase Modifiers

Quick phrase modifiers are also included, to allow formatting of small portions of text within a paragraph.

\_emphasis\_
\_\_italicized\_\_
\*strong\*
\*\*bold\*\*
??citation??
-deleted text-
+inserted text+
^superscript^
~subscript~
@code@
%(classname)span%

==notextile== (leave text alone)

Links

To make a hypertext link, put the link text in "quotation marks" followed immediately by a colon and the URL of the link.

Optional: text in (parentheses) following the link text, but before the closing quotation mark, will become a Title attribute for the link, visible as a tool tip when a cursor is above it.

Example:

"This is a link (This is a title) ":http://www.textism.com

Will become:

<a href="http://www.textism.com" title="This is a title">This is a link</a>

Images

To insert an image, put the URL for the image inside exclamation marks.

Optional: text that immediately follows the URL in (parentheses) will be used as the Alt text for the image. Images on the web should always have descriptive Alt text for the benefit of readers using non-graphical browsers.

Optional: place a colon followed by a URL immediately after the closing ! to make the image into a link.

Example:

!http://www.textism.com/common/textist.gif(Textist)!

Will become:

<img src="http://www.textism.com/common/textist.gif" alt="Textist" />

With a link:

!/common/textist.gif(Textist)!:http://textism.com

Will become:

<a href="http://textism.com"><img src="/common/textist.gif" alt="Textist" /></a>

Defining Acronyms

HTML allows authors to define acronyms via the tag. The definition appears as a tool tip when a cursor hovers over the acronym. A crucial aid to clear writing, this should be used at least once for each acronym in documents where they appear.

To quickly define an acronym in Textile, place the full text in (parentheses) immediately following the acronym.

Example:

ACLU(American Civil Liberties Union)

Will become:

<acronym title="American Civil Liberties Union">ACLU</acronym>

Adding Tables

In Textile, simple tables can be added by seperating each column by a pipe.

|a|simple|table|row|
|And|Another|table|row|

Attributes are defined by style definitions in parentheses.

table(border:1px solid black).
(background:#ddd;color:red). |{}| | | |

Using RedCloth

RedCloth is simply an extension of the String class, which can handle Textile formatting. Use it like a String and output HTML with its RedCloth#to_html method.

doc = RedCloth.new "

h2. Test document

Just a simple test."

puts doc.to_html

By default, RedCloth uses both Textile and Markdown formatting, with Textile formatting taking precedence. If you want to turn off Markdown formatting, to boost speed and limit the processor:

class RedCloth::Textile.new( str )