The basic idea behind StructuredText is to avoid the necessity for a markup language like TeX, Troff or HTML/SGML/XML and being able to create richly structured documents without thinking about the markup. The StructuredText markup language is intiutive, minimal and unobtrusive.

There are several different versions of StructuredText:

• ClassicStructuredText

• [http://dev.zope.org/Members/jim/StructuredTextWiki/StructuredTextNG StructuredTextNG]

• [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext/ Setext]

• ReStructuredText - intended primarily for documentation

• PyTextile - intended for web use

One application of StructuredText which is currently discussed on the DocSig is the generation of documentation from Python DocStrings.