Tags

As known from many other markup languages, tags are used to categorize text. In its simplest form a PerlPoint tag embeds a bunch of text in a paragraph, saying "this should be treated as this or that". So, if we want something to be handled as italic text, we use the tag \I and write

    \I<italic>

As you can see, a tag is made of capitals and preceded by a backslash. The embedded text part is enclosed by angle brackets. This embedded part is called the "tag body".

Similar to \I, \B marks text as bold, and \C formats its body as code.

    Look at \B<this> \C<code>.

You want more control over colors and fonts? Use the \F tag in the tradition of the old fashioned HTML tag <F>. To specify the colors etc., this tag needs options. Tag options are enclosed by braces:

    Color this \F{color=red}<red>.

The general rule is that options, if required, are written between the tag name and the body. Option values are assigned via = and can be quoted. Quotes are required if the values contain other characters than letters, digits and underscores.

    Color this \F{color="#abcdef"}<text>.

Use whitespaces to separate options:

    \F{color=red size=20}<red and large>.

\X is another important base tag. It adds its body text to the index, from where a reference will be provided back to the tag location.

    Index \X<this>!

All options can be nested:

    This text is \I<\B<\X<italic, bold and indexed>>>.

Please take care to make \X the innermost tag when nesting - otherwise, you would index enclosed tags as well (and that's why PerlPoint treats this as an error).

    Invalid \X<\B<\I<nesting>>>.

Borrowed from HTML like \F, the \IMAGE tag includes an image. It is that near to HTML that several options are named as there: src, alt and align all work as expected.

    \IMAGE{src="image.png"}

\IMAGE is an example of a tag that has no body. In fact, both option and body parts can be optional, mandatory or forbidden. If this sounds complicated, rest assured: each tag "knows" what it requires, and PerlPoint will warn you instantly if it finds a tag used the wrong way.

Finally, it's easy to add links to other parts of the document by using \REF.

    =This is our target
  
    bla bla
  
    =Here we add a reference
  
    See \REF{name="This is our target" type=linked}<this chapter>.

\REF has lots of options, but basically this is how you will use it most. This example adds a linked reference to the chapter which is named by the name option. As you can see, we refer to the target chapter by its name.

But targets do not need to be chapters. You can refer to any point in your document that was marked as an anchor (which happens automatically to chapters). Anchors are set up by option \A:

    =Our chapter
  
    With an \A{name="our anchor"}<anchor>.
  
    =Somewhere else
  
    Hey, go to this \REF{name="our anchor" type=linked}<anchor>!

See the "Advanced linking" chapter below for more features offered by \REF. For a complete reference of all basic tags, please refer to PerlPoint::Tags::Basic.