The formatted text option allows for basic formatting of text, without resorting to html. Paragraphs, email addresses and web site addresses function as for plain text. In addition, the following functions are available:

Character styles

Escaped characters

The \ character can be used to display characters that would otherwise have a special meaning in formatted text mode. So, for example, you can start a paragraph with a dash by typing

\-Here is a paragraph of text

to produce

-Here is a paragraph of text

instead of

Here is a paragraph of text

(As you might imagine, there are a lot of backslashes in the source code of this page!)

Line breaks

These are produced by putting a line containing a single dot between two paragraphs, eg

Now is the
.
time for
.
all
.
good
.
men to come to the aid of their
.
party

produces

Now is the
time for
all
good
men to come to the aid of their
party

Bold and italic text

These are produced by enclosing the text in square and curly braces respectively,eg

This is {another} [fine] [{mess}] you got me into Stanley!

produces

This is another fine mess you got me into Stanley!

Changing the size of text

This is achieved by 'bracketing' the text with a two-character sequence. The ^ symbol is used to increase the size of text, while the _ character is used to decrease it. So, for example,

Alice drunk the magic potion and got 1^bigger^1 and 2^bigger^2 and 3^bigger^3, and the world seemed 1_smaller_1 and 2_smaller_2 and 3_smaller_3.

produces

Alice drunk the magic potion and got bigger and bigger and bigger, and the world seemed smaller and smaller and smaller.

Paragraph styles

Headings

Six levels of heading can be specified by beginning the paragraph with the number followed by the + sign, eg

2+Headings

produces the heading above.

Lists

Numbered lists

Each paragraph begins with a # character, eg

#first item

#second item

#etc

produces

1. first item
2. second item
3. etc

Note the blank line between each paragraph.

Unordered lists

Each paragraph begins with a * character, eg

*first item

*second item

*etc

produces

• first item
• second item
• etc

Inset paragraphs ('blockquotes')

These are produced by beginning the paragraph with a - sign, eg

-Perl is a language for getting yor job done.

-Of course, if your job is programming, you can get your job done with any "complete" computer language, theoretically speaking. But we all know that computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy. At one extreme, the so-called "fourth-generation languages" make it easy to do some things, but nearly impossible to do other things. At the other extreme, certain well-known "industrial-strength" languages make it equally difficult to do almost everything.

-Perl is different. In a nutshell, Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible.

-[Larry Wall, {Programming Perl, 2e}, O'Reilly 1996]

produces

Perl is a language for getting yor job done.

Of course, if your job is programming, you can get your job done with any "complete" computer language, theoretically speaking. But we all know that computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy. At one extreme, the so-called "fourth-generation languages" make it easy to do some things, but nearly impossible to do other things. At the other extreme, certain well-known "industrial-strength" languages make it equally difficult to do almost everything.

Perl is different. In a nutshell, Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible.

Larry Wall, Programming Perl, 2e, O'Reilly 1996

Tables

These are produced by starting each paragraph of the table with a |. The | character is also used to separate rows. Note that leading and trailing whitespace is stripped from cells, so you can add extra spaces to get the columns to line up, without affecting the final output, eg

|Name|Favourite food|Favourite book

|Gus|Bananas|Planet of the Apes

|Bugs|Carrots|A brief history of tunnel construction techniques

|Brian|Lettuce leaves|More haste less speed: a parable of modern life

produces

Note that paragraph styles cannot currently be nested, eg it is not possible to produce multi-level lists or tables. If you need more control over the layout of text, the best solution is html. You can convert formatted text into html automatically: see page 9.