People who seem to take the most interest in this also express desire to use it locally. I'll have to figure out a way to cater to you folks.
But that's a markup language. The difference between * text * and <b> text </b> is a matter of syntax, not kind. Also, in most forums like this one, asterisk text asterisk gives italic text.
No. Asterisks that aren't lexical content are markup. HTML tags are also markup, just a different markup. When you replace asterisks with HTML tags, you're translating from one markup to another.
The markup cycle ends when the markup is rendered as styled text that a human recognizes as lexical content. For example, italicized text.
The thing is I don't "replace" asteriks with HTLM tags, I keep the asterisks visible.
If star text star displays star text star in bold (ie, not removing the stars, inserting </b> stuff around the whole construct), is it still a "markup language" ?
Let say I process a text file to display it in HTML and the only addition I do is say "quoted content gets italicized". Is that a "markup language", or just some "text embellishment"?
The issue I am trying to address is the learning curve with all the existing markup languages. Without going the "wysiwyg" editing way, that is.
I figured out that if the "marks" are visible in the final result, they get easy to learn.
As far as the star goes, I want to use it for beginning bulleted lists.