Text markup for .azw

[joelleaman]

Hello

I've been experimenting with sending documents to my Kindle 3 via my ...@kindle.com and I noticed that Amazon uses some sort of markup to format a text document in the .azw file it sends you.

For example,

*single asterisks*

_single underscores_

#single hashes#

1. Bird
2. McHale
2. Parish

* Red
* Green
* Blue

- Red
- Green
- Blue

will be formatted to

single asterisks
single underscores
single hashes

1. Bird
2. McHale
3. Parish
   • Red
   • Green
   • Blue
     • Red
     • Green
     • Blue

It does not automatically format the text "Chapter 1" as a chapter start.
It also does nothing with basic html tags such as <b>bold</b> <i>italics</i>.

Does anyone know what markup the Amazon conversion service uses and where I can find a full list of formatting marks?

Thanks

Joel

[joelleaman]

I've sent an email to Amazon asking the above questions. I'll wait and see if I hear anything and let you know when/if I do.

[dwig]

It looks similar to "Markdown" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) and/or reStructuredText (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText)

[joelleaman]

Originally Posted by dwig

It looks similar to "Markdown" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) and/or reStructuredText (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText)

Thanks dwig. It seems to me to be mostly like Mardown but with customisations for certain things like not using double * or _ for emphasis and using # for bold. It doesn't recognise ### Header 3 for a third level header.

I just wish I could find some documentation on it.

[DaleDe]

AZW is Amazon's name for their MOBI format. Check the MOBI documentation.

Dale

[dwig]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

AZW is Amazon's name for their MOBI format. Check the MOBI documentation.

Dale

The OP is inquiring about documentation for the input format (TXT with markup) and not the output format (AZW, MOBI, ...)

Amazon has a daemon which converts emailed TXT files to AZW for delivery to your Kindle. This daemon appears to respect some markup in the source TXT but there doesn't seem to be documentation, or at least easily discovered documentation, for the markup supported by the daemon.