What is ReText?

The ReText website on GitHub says that ReText is a simple but powerful editor for Markdown and reStructuredText markup languages.

Doing a search on the HPR site returned the following two references to ReText.

The excellent Markdown and Pandoc HPR 1832 episode by b-yeezi makes reference to ReText

Dave Morriss mentioned using ReText as a possible tool when sending in shownotes as markdown is preferable to plain text. Refer to HPR 3167

Retext Version Info

As of the 1st of January 2021 I am running ReText version 7.0.1 the latest version was 7.1.0 this was last updated on the 4th of April 2020.

Why I am covering this

I’m covering this because in HPR show 3167 Dave Morriss said that Markdown was a preferred way to submit shownotes. Prior to this I had supplied my shownotes in plain text.

What is Markdown?

I guess I first must cover what markdown is I found the following definitions:-

Description of Markdown from Wikipedia

Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is appealing to the human users in its source form.[9] Markdown is widely used in blogging, instant messaging, online forums, collaboration software, documentation pages, and even readme files Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

Description of Markdown from John Gruber's website, one of the co founders of Markdown.

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Example text used in the show and how it looks

# This is a level 1 heading

## This is a level 2 heading

### This is a level 3 heading

This is a level 1 heading

This is a level 2 heading

This is a level 3 heading

List of useful links

Finally here are useful links that are available from within the ReText program. They can be found within the Help / About ReText menu:-

Link to ReText website

Link to Markdown syntax

Link to reStructuredText syntax

Final thoughts

Using ReText to pull these shownotes together disciplined me to hopefully put more meaningful titles within my shownotes.

It helped my to create meaningful descriptive links which will hopefully help accessibility for the visually impaired.

I edited the text on this occasion in live preview mode I found this made it very easy to see how the final version would look.

I think I ended up with more polished shownotes that hopefully needs fewer and hopefully no input from our band of HPR volunteers working behind the scenes.