formatyla

Formatyla is a hypothetical domain-specific language designed to describe document formats and templated layouts. It provides a declarative syntax for specifying typography, spacing, color, and structure for both print and digital media, enabling consistent rendering across rendering engines.

Design goals include readability, portability, and extensibility. The core grammar is lightweight and data-oriented, while extensions add data binding, conditional formatting, and template functions. It is intended to be platform-agnostic, with exporters to PDF, HTML, and plain text.

Syntax and examples. Formatyla uses blocks, properties, and lists to describe a document. Example: document { title: "Annual Report" fonts: { main: "Serif", size: 12 } sections: [ { type: "header", text: "Executive Summary" }, { type: "body", text: "..." } ] } This example shows nesting and basic styling. Parsers exist in several languages, and rendering engines interpret the definitions to produce final output.

History and status. The concept emerged in the early 2020s through community discussions and a few prototype projects. Various open-source tools provide partial support, focusing on templating and styling pipelines. The ecosystem remains experimental and evolving.

Usage and relationship to other formats. Formatyla sits between template languages and style sheet systems, borrowing from both. It is designed to describe how content should appear rather than how it is structured, though it can reference data sources. It complements formats like JSON, YAML, and CSS by offering an integrated description of layout and appearance.

See also: Template languages, Domain-specific languages, Stylesheets.