Dedication
The Textsmith Primer
Welcome
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
I. Foundations of Plain Text
1
What Is Plain Text?
2
Why Plain Text Endures
3
Text Encodings and Unicode
4
The Unix Text Philosophy
5
Closing Thoughts
II. Markup Languages
6
Introducing Markup Languages
7
The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the Rise of the World Wide Web
8
The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
9
TeX, LaTeX, and the Art of Digital Typesetting
10
reStructuredText and Python Documentation
11
AsciiDoc and the Evolution of Technical Writing
12
Markdown: The Everyday Markup Language
13
Beyond Markdown: CommonMark, GitHub Flavored Markdown, and AI Markdown
14
Typst and the Modernization of Digital Typesetting
15
Mermaid and Graphviz: Creating Diagrams with Text
16
Closing Thoughts
III. Text Processing
17
The Unix Toolbox: Small Programs, Big Results
18
Searching the Text Universe: grep, ripgrep, and Friends
19
The Art of Pattern Matching: Regular Expressions
20
Transforming Text: sed and the Art of the Stream
21
awk: When Text Becomes Data
22
Ordering the Text Universe: sort, uniq, cut, paste, join, and comm
23
The Shell: Where Tools Become Workflows
24
Text Databases and Structured Data
25
Searching Knowledge: From find to Full-Text Search
26
Automation and the Philosophy of Text
27
Closing Thoughts
IV. Publishing
28
From Manuscript to Many Formats: The Philosophy of Single-Source Publishing
29
Pandoc: The Universal Document Converter
30
Quarto: A Publishing System for the Plain Text Age
31
Building Websites from Plain Text
32
Books Without Word Processors
33
Academic Publishing: Precision Through Plain Text
34
Publishing Documentation: From Manuals to Living Knowledge
35
Presentations and Dashboards: Publishing Ideas Visually
36
The Publishing Pipeline: From Source to Finished Work
37
Publishing for the Future
38
Closing Thoughts
V. The Textsmith's Workshop
39
Choosing Your Tools: Editors as Workshops
40
Personal Knowledge Management: Where Ideas Learn to Grow
41
Version Control: Remembering Every Change
42
Automation as Daily Practice
43
Writing in Public: Joining the Conversation
44
The Textsmith and Artificial Intelligence
45
Building a Sustainable Workshop
46
Teaching the Craft: Passing the Hammer
47
The Ethics of Digital Writing
48
Becoming a Textsmith
49
Conclusion
50
Glossary
Appendices
A
One Document, Many Markup Languages
B
A Brief History of Markup Languages
C
Further Reading
Colophon
Dedication
For the curious, the patient, and the generous—the textsmiths of today and tomorrow.
Welcome
Preface