Setext

Setext (Structure Enhanced Text) is a lightweight markup language used to format plain text documents such as e-newsletters, Usenet postings, and e-mails. In contrast to some other markup languages (such as HTML), the markup is easily readable without any parsing or special software.

Setext was first introduced in 1991 by Ian Feldman for use in the TidBITS electronic newsletter.

Setext allows viewing of marked-up documents without special viewing software. When appropriate software is used, however, a rich text-style experience is available to the user.

Smaller documents are trivial to create in any text editor.

To prevent errors, most large setext publications are created using a markup language such as HTML or SGML and then converted. The setext document can then be distributed without the need for the recipient to use a HTML email or web viewer.

Multiple setext documents can be stored in the same file, similarly to how the mbox format can store multiple e-mail messages together.

It was initially announced that multiple documents could be included in a single stream, separated by a special <end> tag serving as a document delimiter. After several months, it was clarified that this tag was not an official part of setext, and that multiple documents should instead be delimited by $$ appearing at the end of a line of text.

Regardless of the number of documents stored in the same file, basic metadata can be stored about any or all of them by using the subject-tt tag syntax.

The following are the ten most common of the 16 different setext tags.

By default all properly setext-ized files will have an ".etx" or ".ETX" suffix. This stands for an "emailable/enhanced text".

Other lightweight markup languages (inspired by Setext):

• Markdown, one of the most used.
• reStructuredText, used to generate Python manuals.
• Textile, designed to generate HTML.
• txt2tags

• Setext format
• Setext historical documents at Archive.org
• TidBITS introduction of setext
• setext+sgml at W3.org, including the same document in both setext-like plain text and html formats to allow a side-by-side comparison.

• setext2html.pl — A Perl setext -> HTML converter
• setextbrowser.zomdir.com (Archived 29 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine) – A web application which let you browse the internet in a semi-setext format