[rescue] [off-topic] What was this markup language?

[Andrew M Hoerter]

On 12/8/15 8:14, microcode at zoho.com wrote:

> I have dim memories of making a little money editing term papers on a DEC-20
> in the early 1980s. It seems to me I used some kind of markup language where
> the directives started with a "." character in the first column of the
> line. I was able to do indenting and alignment and other text-processing stuff to
> make the papers print out nicely.

I'd guess something in the runoff family -- troff, nroff, etc.

Still used today every time you read a manpage.

> Next question, other than LaTeX, are there any good choices in simple markup
> languages suitable for writing letters and resumes, etc.? I'm not really
> happy with Open/Libre Office nor the direction it's going in. I'd like to
> look into some alternative where the input stays as ASCII text.

There are several options out there, some niche, some popular -- a 
couple of starter suggestions might be Markdown or Lout.