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Latte
Latte, the Language for Transforming Text, is a simple and powerful language for including markup in text documents. Documents written in Latte can be converted to high-quality HTML, making it a better language for writing World Wide Web documents.
Development on Latte has ceased in favor of Blatte, a very similar language with a completely new, smaller, faster, simpler implementation and much more power. Read the Blatte announcement that was made on the Latte mailing list on 28 March 2001. |
Latte 2.1 contains a change incompatible with Latte 1.1 and earlier. If you've used earlier versions of Latte, you may need to make two simple adjustments in your Latte files. |
Why Latte?
HTML, the language of the web, has numerous serious shortcomings. Its own creator has said that it was never meant to be seen by humans, let alone written by them. HTML was meant to be generated, with the actual editing taking place in WYSIWYG editors or with higher-level languages. Latte is one such language.
Latte's syntax is simpler and more editor-friendly than HTML. You don't need to balance opening and closing tags, you don't need <p> tags, and you don't need special codes to write characters such as <, >, &, and ". But best of all, Latte lets you define powerful, reusable functions to encapsulate repeated text, layout constructs, and style information.
| Most pages on this site were created with Latte. At the end of each page is a link to its actual Latte source. You can compare the Latte version with the HTML version! (Use your browser's "view page source" function.) |
Latte resources
The Latte examples page gives an idea of what Latte looks like.
The Latte user manual describes everything about how to use Latte.
The Latte API manual (not yet completed) describes the programming interface to the Latte library, for C++ programmers who wish to write Latte-based translators and other tools.
There is a Latte mailing list for announcements, bug reports, advocacy, code-sharing, questions, suggestions, and other Latte-related discussion. You can also send mail directly to the Latte developers.
The Latte FAQ (answers to frequently asked questions) can help you if you're having a problem with Latte, or if you'd like to ask a question on the mailing list but suspect it's already been answered numerous times.
The Latte NEWS file describes changes from previous versions of Latte.
The download page contains links for downloading Latte in source or executable form. If you download the Latte source, the build notes page can help you anticipate problems that may arise.
Latte is open source software from
Zanshin, Inc., released under the
terms of the
Zanshin Public License.
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This document was produced by Latte from the file home.latte (with extra definitions from style.latte). |