this page presents and specifies a few lightweight plaintext formats for creating and managing notes or documents.

the simplest note-taking format. each new entry is added at the top, separated by a boundary, for example an empty line. editing is fast and requires no other syntax.

example:

entry-1
entry-1

entry-2
entry-2

if entries contain empty lines, boundaries become ambiguous. other boundaries can be used:

entry-1
entry-1

---

entry-2
entry-2

an indent-based, machine- and human-readable format for titled note blocks. top-level words act as tags or headings. indentation defines structure. no extra syntax needed. formatting like this has also been called indented plaintext.

heading
  heading
    content
    content
  heading: content
  content
...

benefits

• low friction - just type
• compatible with other formats
• no syntax beyond indentation
• low noise
• supports nested structure
• machine readable and convertible to other formats like markdown, pdf, and html
• a lot of structured content fits readably on the same screen area
• can be used with smart indenting features (example: cycling from forward 1-2 steps and then from the beginning)

drawbacks

• does not do so well with large blocks that need to be indented

proposed file name extension: .it

itpn is short for "indent tree packet notation".

document = {node} ;
node = indent heading [":" content] "\n" {child} ;
child = deeper_indent node ;
heading = text ;
content = text ;
indent = {unit_indent} ;
deeper_indent = indent unit_indent ;
unit_indent = "  " ;
text = ? any non-newline text ? ;

itpn-filter: searches in headings
itpn-from-markdown: converts from markdown to itpn
itpn-parse: syntax checks and canonicalizes itpn
itpn-to-markdown: converts to markdown

Usage: itpn-filter [options] search_string ...
  -a  and
  -o  or
  -n  not
  -c  print child-tree only
  -d  match at depth, examples: 0, or 1-2

a lightweight markup format standardized as commonmark. suitable for structured documents with headings, lists, and emphasis. except for nested lists, it is written as stacked blocks.

example:

# heading level 1

## heading level 2
- bullet point one
- bullet point two

benefits

• widely supported and portable
• readable as plain text
• machine-readable and can be converted to pdf, html, or other formats

drawbacks

• still requires markup prefixes (e.g. "#", "-", "*")
• multiple alternatives for syntax are specified. for example: bullet points, code blocks, and even the whole heading structure has redundant alternative syntax.

here is an example of an extension syntax for structured documents. it includes forms that can be evaluated by custom procedures to notate things like lists, tables and more.

one of its main strengths beside the minimal syntax are the expression types that allow using plaintext or nested dynamic expressions either inline, for the current line, or for the current block.

#(identifier scheme-expression ...)

#identifier scheme-expression ...
  scheme-expression ...
  ...

##(identifier plaintext/itm-expression ...)

##identifier plaintext/itm-expression ...
  plaintext/itm-expression ...
  ...

#identifier: scheme-expressions ...

##identifier: plaintext/itm-expressions ...

###identifier plaintext ...
  plaintext
  ...

this is a heading
  this is content
  and more example text
  a sub-heading
    more content

example text

more text after empty line

\:
\#
\##
\###
\\

###
  content
    content
  content