Formattingit

Formattingit is a lightweight, text-centric specification for describing styling and layout of content in digital documents. It is designed to separate content from presentation by providing an approachable syntax for indicating emphasis, structure, and basic formatting that can be rendered to HTML, PDF, or printable formats.

Developed by a collaborative community in the early 2010s, formattingit emerged as an alternative to heavier markup languages. Its goal is to be readable in plain text, easy to parse, and portable across platforms and authoring tools.

Formattingit uses a small set of tags embedded in the text. For example, bold is indicated with [b]text[/b], italics with [i]text[/i], and inline code with [code]text[/code]. Paragraphs are separated by blank lines, and lists use a compact syntax such as [list] - item 1 - item 2 [/list]. The system supports links via [link=url]description[/link], and images with [img src=url alt=text].

Implementations typically convert Formattingit to target formats using a rendering pipeline that maps tags to styles or elements. The approach emphasizes accessibility by providing semantic tags and ensuring screen readers can interpret the structure. It also aims for deterministic rendering so the same document yields the same result across devices.

There are multiple open source libraries in various languages, editor plugins for real-time preview, and converters to Markdown, HTML, and PDF. The ecosystem continues to evolve with discussions about extensibility, conflict resolution between nested tags, and localization.

Formattingit sits among lightweight markup languages such as Markdown, BBCode, and reStructuredText, offering a balance between readability and machine-parseability.