Smart text

The easiest way to combine text and markup is to use the smart text mode.

Enable the smart text plugin with

require 'slim/smart'

This automatically enables the :implicit_text option as well, so you can easily type text like this:

p
  This is text.

Slim will automatically treat any line which doesn't start with a lowercase tag name or any of the special characters as an implicit text line. If the text spans several lines, simply indent them.

p
  This is text,
    and it spans
    several lines.

You can also mark the text explicitly with >, for example when it starts with lowercase letter or unusual character, or when the text spans several lines, or merely for aesthetic consistency, or if you want to use uppercase tag names and therefore need to keep the :implicit_text option disabled.

p
  > 'This is text, too.'
p
  >
    This is text
    which spans
    several lines.

As long as you leave the :smart_text_escaping enabled, any non-verbatim text is automatically escaped for you. However, for your convenience, any HTML entities detected are still used verbatim. This way you are most likely to get what you really wanted, without having to worry about HTML escaping all the time.

h1 Questions & Answers
footer
  Copyright © #{Time.now.year}

Another cool thing about smart text is that it mixes fairly well with markup. Smart text lines normally preserve newlines, so it is easy to mix them with other tags, like emphasis or links:

p
  Your credit card
  strong will not
  > be charged now.
p
  Check
  a href=r(:faq) our FAQ
  > for more info.

(Note the use of the explicit text indicator > to distinguish lowercase text from tags).

However, sometimes you do not want the whitespace around the inline tag. Fortunately smart text takes care of the most common cases for you as well. The leading newline is suppressed if the smart text block begins with a character from the :smart_text_begin_chars set (,.;:!?)]} by default). Similarly, trailing newline is suppressed if the smart text block ends with a character from the :smart_text_end_chars set (([{ by default). This makes it quite easy to mix normal text with links or spans like this:

p
  Please proceed to
  a href="/" our homepage
  .
p
  Status: failed (
  a href="#1" details
  ).

Note that smart text is smart enough to know about tag shortcuts, too, so it will correctly deal even with cases like this:

.class
  #id
    #{'More'}
    i text
    ...

Of course, all this is meant only to make working with short text snippets more convenient. For bulk text content, you are more than welcome to use one of the builtin embedded engines, such as Markdown or Textile.

Options

Type	Name	Default	Purpose
Boolean	:implicit_text	true	Enable implicit text recognition
Boolean	:smart_text	true	Enable smart text mode newline processing
String	:smart_text_begin_chars	',.;:!?)]}'	Characters suppressing leading newline in smart text
String	:smart_text_end_chars	'([{'	Characters suppressing trailing newline in smart text
Boolean	:smart_text_escaping	true	When set, HTML characters which need escaping are automatically escaped in smart text