Syntax

Introduction

A format string may contain some special symbols (a.k.a. "tags") that can be parsed into ANSI escape codes.

For example:

I'm <B>bold</> and <BLUE;B>blue</>.

can be parsed into

I'm bold and $${\textbf{\color{blue}blue}}$$.

Tag types

There are two types of tags: ANSI and behavioral.

ANSI tags

ANSI tags are parsed into ANSI escape codes under the format like \x1b[...m, such as:

Tag	Target code	Description
<B>	\x1b[1m	Bold font
<CYAN>	\x1b[36m	Cyan foreground
</>	\x1b[0m	Reset

Multiple continuous ANSI tags or ANSI escape codes delimited with ; can be combined into one with the same delimiter, and numbers will be directly put into the target ANSI code:

<CYAN;B>
<FG;10;10;10>

For the full list of the ANSI tags, see here.

Behavioral tags

Behavioral tags look slightly different from the ANSI tags, as they begin with an exclamation point (!) after the left angle bracket (<).

Currently, there are three types of behavioral tags supported: <!TAB> (Tab), <!LF> (Line feed), and <!CR> (Carriage return).

Repetitions

Behavioral tags can be repeated using a suffix started with a star (*) and followed by a number of times, for example:

<!TAB*5>

means 5 tabs.

Tag escape

If you do not want your < to be treated as the start of a tag, you can use a backslash (\) to escape it. Also, there is no need to escape >:

\<not a tag!>