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. The page breaks will be in effect when printing or exporting to PDF. Example:

Some text here.

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

Add an empty line before starting the next paragraph.

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

Can I use synchronized scrolling?

Synchronized scrolling is currently only supported for Markdown. To use it, you need to enable the WebKit or WebEngine renderer (by checking the corresponding item in the “Edit” menu).

Is there a dark theme?

There is a way to make ReText look nice with Breeze Dark, see this comment.

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)
• Upload that file to GitHub and create a pull request (or commit that file to locale/ directory using Git)
• Until then, you can compile the translation into a .qm file via Qt Linguist and use it.