Structured text is text that uses indentation and simple symbology to indicate the structure of a document. For the next generation of structured text, see [http://dev.zope.org/Members/jim/StructuredTextWiki/StructuredTextNG here].

A structured string consists of a sequence of paragraphs separated by one or more blank lines. Each paragraph has a level which is defined as the minimum indentation of the paragraph. A paragraph is a sub-paragraph of another paragraph if the other paragraph is the last preceding paragraph that has a lower level.

Special symbology is used to indicate special constructs:

 * A single-line paragraph whose immediately succeeding paragraphs are lower level is treated as a header.

 * A paragraph that begins with a '-', '*', or 'o' is treated as an unordered list (bullet) element.

 * A paragraph that begins with a sequence of digits followed by a white-space character is treated as an ordered list element.

 * A paragraph that begins with a sequence of sequences, where each sequence is a sequence of digits or a sequence of letters followed by a period, is treated as an ordered list element.

 * A paragraph with a first line that contains some text, followed by some white-space and '--' is treated as a descriptive list element. The leading text is treated as the element title.

 * Sub-paragraphs of a paragraph that ends in the word 'example' or the word 'examples', or '::' is treated as example code and is output as is.

 * Text enclosed single quotes (with white-space to the left of the first quote and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second quote) is treated as example code.

 * Text surrounded by '*' characters (with white-space to the left of the first '*' and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second '*') is emphasized.

 * Text surrounded by '**' characters (with white-space to the left of the first '**' and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second '**') is made strong.

 * Text surrounded by '_' underscore characters (with whitespace to the left and whitespace or punctuation to the right) is made underlined.

 * Text encloded by double quotes followed by a colon, a URL, and concluded by punctuation plus white space, *or* just white space, is treated as a hyper link. For example:

    "Zope":http://www.zope.org/ is ...

 Is interpreted as '<a href="http://www.zope.org/">Zope</a> is ....'

 '''Note:''' This works for relative as well as absolute URLs.

 * Text enclosed by double quotes followed by a comma, one or more spaces, an absolute URL and concluded by punctuation plus white space, or just white space, is treated as a hyper link. For example:

    "mail me", mailto:[email protected].

 Is interpreted as '<a href="mailto:[email protected]">mail me</a>.'

 * Text enclosed in brackets which consists only of letters, digits, underscores and dashes is treated as hyper links within the document. For example:

    As demonstrated by Smith [12] this technique is quite effective.

 Is interpreted as '... by Smith <a href="#12">[12]</a> this ...'. Together with the next rule this allows easy coding of references or end notes.

 * Text enclosed in brackets which is preceded by the start of a line, two periods and a space is treated as a named link. For example:

    .. [12] "Effective Techniques" Smith, Joe ...

 Is interpreted as '<a name="12">[12]</a> "Effective Techniques" ...'. Together with the previous rule this allows easy coding of references or end notes.

 * A paragraph that has blocks of text enclosed in '||' is treated as a table. The text blocks correspond to table cells and table rows are denoted by newlines. By default the cells are center aligned. A cell can span more than one column by preceding a block of text with an equivalent number of cell separators '||'. Newlines and '|' cannot be a part of the cell text. For example:

  {{{

|||| **Ingredients** ||

|| *Name* || *Amount* ||

||Spam||10||

||Eggs||3||

}}}

 renders like this:

  |||| **Ingredients** ||

  || *Name* || *Amount* ||

  ||Spam||10||

  ||Eggs||3||