The purpose of this page is to permit discussion of matters related to the Aida Mode for Alpha and the Aida tagging system.
Aida is a tagging and text formatting system. It is a general purpose markup system designed to produce many kinds of generically formatted and structured text (mainly doc files, help files, howtos etc.). It was initially developed to prepare the documentation files for the Alpha text editors but it rapidly became a more general purpose project. Its main characteristic is to be and remain both simple and lightweight. Learning its syntax is a matter of five minutes: it is summarized on the Aida Reference page.
Aida can be considered as a sort of lowest common denominator between several tagging languages and formats. Using it, you just have to maintain a single file which will thereafter be converted to other formats as necessary.
This would all remain theoretical and abstract were it not for the Aida Mode for Alpha which is an implementation in Tcl of useful editing and converting tools. Thanks to this package, Aida becomes productive: you have editing facilities to prepare your documentation files using the Aida syntax and then convert them to Html, XML, PDF, Man pages etc.
Aida's home page is there: http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/bdesgraupes/aida.html
The various aspects of Aida, both as a markup scheme and a production tool, are discussed on this Wiki site in the following subpages. They also contain useful tips and techniques.
One of the initial goals of Aida was also to extend the capacities of the already existing AIDE scheme proposed by the Alpha Documentation Team. See also the AIDE Syntax Discussion page.
Please edit below the following line to add any suggestions, requests, comments etc. concerning this project.