Sitemap problem

I have tried to submit my sitemap to Google.

I get the following message:
Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page (which it is). Please use a supported sitemap format instead

Could anyone please tell me how I can get my sitemap submitted and what does it mean - supported sitemap format

The links on the sitemap are all text links (no video or image links)

Someone told me that the sitemap should be in XML but I haven't a clue about XML

All help much appreciated

Time to get a clue...

http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php

I think you are confused with the xml-sitemaps targetted for search engines and the html sitemaps (probably, a hierarchical one) provided on the website for the users of the site (to get an overall structure of the site)

I have heard that this search engine sitemap can be submitted as a list in a text file as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.

Can anyone say if this is true or not?

Thanks in advance