Outline

Why bother?
	[For a number of reasons I prefer a plain text editor
	(see http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~gary/wily/).  It's a pain
	to read text with HTML markup strewn through it, so
	I have a *very* simple plain text markup, which gets
	converted into HTML.]
Usage
	$~gary/bin/rc/outline [-p printfile ] [-t template] file [file ...]$
	[Converts each named text $file$, writing each
	to $file.html$, using the optional $template$,
	or with the $-p$ option converts all the files
	into $printfile$]

Example
	[This document is probably a decent example.  See
	the source for this document by following the link below.]
	=<A HREF="index.txt">The source</A>
	
Paragraphs
	[Treats a text file as a collection of paragraphs.
	Each line is a new paragraph, except that paragraphs which
	start with '[' continue until a line which ends
	with ']', and lines which end with '\' continue
	onto the next line]
	
	Blank paragraphs, or paragraphs beginning with '#' are ignored.
	
	Paragraphs beginning with '|' are treated as example text.
	Paragraphs beginning with '=' are treated as already formatted\
	HTML, and are passed through verbatim.

	[The _first_ paragraph is rendered as a <H2>, and
	is used for the <TITLE> of the document.  Other
	paragraphs with no indentation are rendered as <H3>s.
	Any indented paragraphs are rendered as unordered lists.]
	
Characters
	You can do *bold*, _italic_ and $constant-width$ text, as follows:
	|You can do *bold*, _italic_ and $constant-width$ text

Links
	Outline automatically turns some words into hypertext links.
	Any word starting with $http:$, $ftp:$, or $mailto:$ is turned into\
		the appropriate link.
	Any word which is also the name of a file is turned into a link.
	
	Extensions
		[When searching for local files, $outline$ first tries searching
		for the base word with $.html$, $.gif$ or $.jpg$ as an extension,
		so if you write $see appendix$ and the file $appendix.html$
		exists, the word $appendix$ will be linked to $appendix.html$]
	
	[References to image files (files ending with $.gif$ or $.jpg$) are 
	replaced with inline images, like rd_star.gif.
	For $.gif$ files, $outline$ calculates
	the correct height and width.]
	
	[If underscores appear in the names of local files, they are
	replaced with spaces in the HTML version, i.e. 
	$section_2$ will be replaced by $<A HREF="section_2.html">
	section 2</A>$]
	
Template
	[If you provide a template document, it should include the text
	$%(title)s$ where you want the title to go, and $%(body)s$
	where you want the rendered HTML to go (typically inside
	the BODY of the HTML document.  The default template appears
	below:]
	[|<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
	<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>%(title)s</TITLE></HEAD>
	<BODY>
	%(body)s
	</BODY>
	</HTML>]

Source
	Is in $~gary/src/outline/$ if you want to hack.  It's just a few Python files.
	
Author
	mailto:gary@cs.su.oz.au
	http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~gary/
