FAQ

What is ReText?

ReText is a text editor for various markup languages (such as Markdown and reStructuredText). It gives you the power to control all output formatting. The files it works with are plain text files, however it can export to PDF, HTML and other formats.

For which platforms is ReText available?

ReText is officially supported on Linux. Theoretically it can be run on any other platform. If you want to port ReText to your platform, please file a bug and describe required changes.

What are Markdown and reStructuredText?

Markdown is a text markup language which allows you to create documents of all types (this page is written using Markdown). Some links: website, basics, syntax, and online renderer.

You may also want to have a look at odt2txt or odt2pandoc scripts that convert ODT files to Markdown files.

reStructuredText is another popular markup language. Some links: website, quick reference, example document, cheat sheet, and online renderer.

Can I use other markup languages?

You can, see PyMarkups documentation for details.

Can I use math formulas in Markdown?

Yes, see Math page for details.

Can I use page breaks in Markdown?

Yes, you can do this in Markdown mode by using "page-break-before: always" style. Example:

Some text here.

Another page starts here.
{: style="page-break-before: always" }

You should enable attr_list Markdown extension before using this (see Markdown extensions page for details).

Why doesn't ReText display title of my reStructuredText document?

When you put a header in the beginning of the file, it's considered as document title, so it won't be displayed. But if you export your document to PDF/HTML, this will be displayed as a title.

According to the specification:

A lone top-level section title can be treated as the document title. Similarly, a lone second-level section title immediately after the "document title" can become the document subtitle. The rest of the sections are then lifted up a level or two. See the DocTitle transform for details.

To work around this issue, put this to your docutils configuration file (i.e. ~/.docutils):

[standalone reader]
doctitle_xform = false

I want to translate ReText into my language.

Anyone is welcome to translate ReText! There are two ways to do this. The first way is via Transifex web interface.

Alternatively, you can translate the .ts files manually using Qt Linguist. Here are the instructions:

• Install Qt and PyQt development tools (On Debian-based systems, you will need packages qttools5-dev-tools and pyqt5-dev-tools)
• Clone the repository from GitHub
• Run pylupdate5 ReText/*.py -ts retext_LANG.ts (replace LANG with code of your language, i.e. retext_fr.ts or retext_pt_BR.ts)
• Open the generated .ts file with Qt Linguist and make the translation (you can read the one minute guide first)
• Create an issue and attach the .ts file there so that we can include it to ReText source code tree
• Until then, you can compile the translation into a .qm file via Qt Linguist and use it.