How to format text (for example making text bold) in svn log messages?

Question

How can one format text in svn commit log messages? Using *text* does not make the text bold, it shows * in message when I use svn log.

Answer 1

You can not format commit-messages. Period

Answer 2

Subversion itself considers the log message as plain text, so you cannot do it in such a way that any client will display your formatting.

The TortoiseSVN client does however display log message text between ‘*’s as bold (and ‘_’s as underlined and ‘^’s as italicised), as documented in the manual. But bear this in mind:

• This formatting is meaningless to Subversion itself; svn log will display plain text.
• Tortoise appears to do this only when the characters immediately next to the markup on the inside are letters.
• Tortoise displays the markup characters, whether or not it honours them.
• The bolding is fairly faint in many fonts.
• I have the impression that the commit-dialogue does not always immediately apply the markup, e.g. when pasting text.