Text

Whitespace

Whitespaces are space, tab, form feed (), and zero-width space (​). The carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) are also whitespaces in the XHTML document. Whitespace characters will have no visual formatting effects. A number of whitespace will only compact to one space.

Heading

_h1 to _h6 are heading commands to describe the topic of a section. There are six levels. _h1 is the highest level (usually larger font) and _h6 is the lowest level. You need to set their attributes in the style sheet.

_body
  _h1; quote "H1 Title"; h1_
  _h2; quote "H2 Title"; h2_
body_   

The _div command offers a generic mechanism to construct structure documents. _div defines block content. By using 'class' and 'id' attributes, authors may easily control the content in the block for presentation. _div along with inline block_span commands are prefered commands to separate structure and presentation. For example,

_div "id='David' class='client'"
_span "class='title'"
  quote "Client information:" 
span_
_table "class='data'"
  _tr 
    _th; quote "Last name:"; th_
    _td; quote "David"; td_
  tr_
  _tr 
    _th; quote "First name:"; th_
    _td; quote "Robert"; td_
  tr_
  _tr
    _th; quote "Tel:"; th_
    _td; quote "(905) 534-2812"; td_
  tr_
  _tr 
    _th; quote "Email:"; th_
    _td; quote "robertd@neatware.com"; td_
  tr_
table_
div_

_p command defines a paragraph. It is also used as a newline in the Snaml. Its 'clear' attribute specifies the property that floats around another object. __br command forces a line break. The character ' ' is a real space.

Plain hyphen is just a regular character '-'. Usually a browser did not display soft hyphen if a line is not broken at a soft hyphen, otherwise it displays the '-' in the end of a line.

_pre command defines preformatted text. It will render the text content of the _pre command "as is". All the newline and space characters will be kept.

_p "clear=right"
  quote "float paragraph" 
  __br
  quote "in the document."
p_

_pre
  quote "preformatted text with space and newline."
pre_        

The _span command separates the small text inline block. _br is a new line command. Usually it is used with an empty command __br. em and strong are emphasis and strong commonds.

The _em and _strong are two most common commands to make structural text. _em is emphasis (default italic) and _strong is strong emphasis (default bold).

_em; quote "The emphasis is italic."; em_
_strong; quote "The strong is blod."; strong_

Other commands work for special purposes. The _cite command is a citation or reference to other source; _dfn command is the defining instance of the enclosed term; _code command is used to represent computer code; and _samp command is for the sample output. In addition, _var command marks the instance of a variable; _abbr command tags abbreviated form; _acronym_kbd command represents the text to be entered by user. Finally, _sup and _sub mark the text as superscript and subscript.

_cite; quote "citation"; cite_
_dfn; quote "defining instance"; dfn_

_code; quote "computer code"; code_
_samp; quote "sample output"; samp_
_var; quote "variable"; var_
_abbr; quote "abbreviated form"; abbr_

quote [_acronym_ "acronym"]
quote [_kbd_ "entered text"]
quote [_sub_ "subscript"]
quote [_sup_ "superscript"]

_blockquote and _q command are for long and short quotation respectively. Browsers generally render _blockquote as an indented block. _q command generally shows text with delimiting quotation marks.

_blockquote "id='group'" 
  quote "block words." 
blockquote_
_q; quote "quote words"; q_        

Finally, _ins and _del commands mark the sections of a document that has been inserted or deleted. They are rarely used.