Text Processing in Python

Appendix D. A State Machine for Adding Markup to Text

This book was written entirely in plaintext editors, using a set of conventions I call “smart ASCII.” In spirit and appearance, smart ASCII resembles the informal markup that has developed on email and Usenet. In fact, I have used an evolving version of the format for a number of years to produce articles, tutorials, and other documents. The book required a few additional conventions in the earlier smart ASCII format, but only a few. It was a toolchain that made almost all the individual typographic and layout decisions. Of course, that toolchain only came to exist through many hours of programming and debugging by me and by other developers.

The printed version of this book used tools ...