As of version 3, Rails doesn't have the textilize and textilize_without_paragraph helper methods.
Textilize is a gem brings back the missing method for Rails 3, and it includes the library RedCloth 3.0.4 (newest is at 4.X), which doesn't need to be compiled on server.
The reason we need this gem is that we use :textilize at a few places in our apps, and we don't need super fast RedCloth, we just need a working version that don't force us to install C extensions on various production servers. This could be useful for bundle-package usage, where you can rely on the bundle/cache gems.
BTW, Textilize is not always the top choice, there are some useful gems that are doing it great, but they will requires C extension due to higher version of RedCloth dependency:
https://github.com/dtrasbo/formatize/
https://github.com/rohit/prarupa
Put gem 'textilize' into your Gemfile and do a bundle install, and that's
it.
textilize("I _love_ ROR(Ruby on Rails)!")
# => "<p>I <em>love</em> <acronym title="Ruby on Rails">ROR</acronym>!</p>"
textilize_without_paragraph("I _love_ ROR(Ruby on Rails)!")
# => "I <em>love</em> <acronym title="Ruby on Rails">ROR</acronym>!"
rake test
whytheluckystiff: RedCloth library
David Heinemeier Hansson: the text helper.
Copyright (c) 2012 Kudelabs
Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.