TextFormattingRules

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Wiki Text Formatting Rules

Shamelessly taken from the original UseModWiki site and heavily edited

Simple editing is one of the major benefits of using a wiki. Users can edit pages without knowing HTML, and still use many formatting features of HTML. Most wikis define a set of formatting rules to convert plain text into HTML. Some wikis (like this one) also allow some HTML "tags", like , , and <pre> within a page. (Some wikis use raw HTML instead of special formatting rules.)

The following text is an overview of the ExaltedWiki text formatting rules. To try these rules for yourself, please feel free to edit the SandBox page. To see how any page is formatted, just follow the link "Modify text of this page" at the bottom of the page. (Note: if you are looking for the templates for certain "types" of pages, they are at FormatStandards.)

<b>BEFORE YOU MAKE OR EDIT ANY PAGES, PLEASE PLEASE READ BestPractices!</b>

Contents

[#Basic]

Basic Text Formatting

Entering text on a wiki can be done simply. Follow these guidelines:

  • Hard returns (i.e., pressing the Enter key twice) are significant in formatting a wiki page; they produce a paragraph break similar to the html

    tag. Single returns are ignored.

  • Multiple spaces and tabs are ignored.
  • Use apostrophes in sequence for '''<b>bold</b>''' and ''<i>italic</i>''. These can be stacked for '''''bold italic.'''''. You may also use the HTML "b" and "i" tags to bold or italicize text.
  • Use tag <tt>for monospace text</tt>.
  • The <br> tag forces a line break. <i>Note: in the earlier days of the Wiki, line breaks were forced by means of a double forwardslash ("\\"). You may see the "\\" notation on older pages; that's what it originally meant.</i>
  • The first character entered on a line often controls the formatting of the text on that line (shades of Fortran), in brief (see below and subpages for details):
    • " " space causes text to appear in a monospaced font where spaces are significant.
    • ":" colon causes text to be indented.
    • "=" equals - followed by a space - creates a heading, a trailing "=" - preceeded by a space - is required.
    • "----" four hyphens creates a horizontal line.
    • "||" - two vertical bars creates a table. Use "||cell1||cell2||cell3" on multiple lines to build large tables. Use "|[" to left-align cells, and "|]" to right-align cells.
    • Repetition of the first character on the line generally increases the indentation or emphasis.
  • You can write something without having the wiki automatically format through use of the "nowiki" tag: e.g. <nowiki>WikiWiki</nowiki>.

[#Links]

Page, URL, and InterWiki Links

You can link to a page by removing the spaces between two or more words, and starting each word with a capital letter, e.g. UserPages.

If a page's content has not been defined yet, then there will be a golden question mark next to the page name. Clicking on that question mark will allow you to create the page. For example, there is no such page as NoSuchPage (please don't click on the golden question mark, because if you create NoSuchPage then it will no longer be a valid example for this happy little section).

Here is an example of a hyperlink to an off-wiki page: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox ends up looking like: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox

Here is an example of a labelled hyperlink to an off-wiki page: [http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox Link name] ends up looking like: Link name

Here is an example of an interwiki link (a link to another ExaltedWiki page) that has been labelled with something other than the page's name: [[UseModWiki | Label name]] ends up looking like: Label name

You can separate links from adjacent text with spaces or the special "" (two double-quotes) delimiter. The "" delimiter is not displayed -- it is useful for cases like plural forms of page links (such as UseModWiki""s). In nearly all cases trailing punctuation is ignored, so you can safely make links like "http://www.usemod.com/," without the trailing comma or quotation marks being part of the link.

[#Lists]

Lists

Simple lists:

* Text for a bulleted list item.
** Text for second-level list.
*** Text for third level, etc.


...which looks like:

  • Text for a bulleted list item.
    • Text for second-level list.
      • Text for third level, etc.

Numbered lists:

# Text for a numbered list item.
## Text for second-level list.
### Text for third level, etc.
## Another Text for the second level.


...which looks like:

  1. Text for a numbered list item.
    1. Text for second-level list.
      1. Text for third level, etc.
    2. Another Text for the second level.

[#Definition]

Definition Text

Term with indented definition: [without a blank line between term and definition]

;Term:Definition (indented)
;;Term (indented):Definition (indented two levels)
;;;Term (indented twice):Definition (indented to third level)

... which looks like:

Term
Definition (indented)
Term (indented)
Definition (indented two levels)
Term (indented twice)
Definition (indented to third level)

[#Images]

Images

Just provide the URL, and the image will be inserted inline.

For example, simply putting http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/ExaltedLogo.gif on a page will lead to the display of this graphic:

http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/ExaltedLogo.gif

These extensions are recognized: GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, JPEG.

If you have a choice, results are usually best with PNG for computer generated images, and JPEG for photographic images.

[#Preformatted]

Preformatted Text

Individual lines can be displayed as preformatted (fixed-width or "typewriter"-font) text by placing one or more spaces at the start of the line. Other wiki formatting (like links) will be applied to this kind of preformatted text.

Additionally, multi-line sections can be marked as pre-formatted text using lines starting with <pre> (to start pre-formatted text), and </pre> (to end preformatted text). The <pre> and </pre> tags are not displayed. Wiki links and other formatting is not done within a preformatted section. (If you want wiki formatting, use spaces at the start of the line instead of the <pre> and </pre> tags.)

For instance: 

Pre-formatted section here.
No other link or format processing is done on pre-formatted sections.
For instance, [[UseModWiki]] is not a link here.

and: 

This is the starting-spaces version of
preformatted text. Note that links like
UseModWiki still work.

[#Misc]

Miscellaneous Rules

  • To write a bullet point, use "&bull;" (with no spaces in between the characters). It will display as •.
  • To redirect a page, replace all of the text on the page with #REDIRECT [page name redirected to]. For example, the link Lexicon goes straight to the Lexicon of Elder Days because the entire text for the Lexicon page says: "#REDIRECT LexiconOfElderDays". You can only redirect to other Wiki pages -- the redirect function will not work if you attempt to use it to point to off-wiki websites.
  • Anchors do work, but are kind of non-intuitive. (No, they are completely broken due to a simple bug that could be easily corrected.) Define an anchor by using this notation: [#AnchorNameText]. Once the anchor is defined, you direct to it by linking to the relevant page using the structure of an off-wiki link (see Hyperlinks section for explanation of inter- and off-wiki links). The anchor link's URL should be structured like so: http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki/pl?ExamplePage%23%23AnchorNameText. <i>Do not attempt to use interwiki links to link to anchors; it will not work -- you must use an off-wiki link. Do not attempt to replace the %23 notation with a #; it will not work.</i>
  • A line that ends in a forwardslash character (\) will be joined with the next line before most formatting rules are applied. This can be useful for breaking up long sections of text in line-sensitive sections (like lists or indented text).
  • If raw-HTML sections are enabled (they are disabled by default), you can enter raw HTML code within a <html> ... </html> section. Note that no quoting is done, so you will need to use sequences like &lt; if you want to display a < character.
  • Most of the formatting rules are order-independent. On rare occasions the order of processing may be important. The rules are processed in the following order: raw HTML sections, HTML quoting, nowiki tags, backslash line joining, preformatted sections, paragraphs, lists and indented text, horizontal lines, italic/bold text, URLs, and finally ordinary WikiName links. [No longer fully accurate for 0.88, needs updating.]

[#Tables]

Tables

The following syntax: 

|| ||'''Label'''||||||'''Spanning Label'''||'''Bar'''||
||These||are||all||sample||table||cells||           
||And||so||are||these||as||well||

...generates the following table:

|| ||Label||||||Spanning Label||Bar|| ||These||are||all||sample||table||cells|| ||And||so||are||these||as||well||

[#HTML]

HTML

  • Encoding the "<" less than, ">" greater than, and "&" ampersand characters is optional.
  • Characters such as <, © and ∞ may be encoded on pages as: \

"<", "©" and "∞" respectively.\ See http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html. UseMod:DougConley dcon

[#Comments]

Comments and Questions

<i>If you have an exciting idea for some form of code or new text formatting rule that ought to be implemented for this wiki, then please head over to WikiChanges and suggest it there.</i>

Okay, for some reason you can't use the "nowiki" tag to keep bullet points from displaying themselves. Anyone know why?
~ Shataina

It is HTML, not the Wiki, that is interpreting your escape sequence. You want to write "&amp;bull;". - willows
Oh. Okay. I thought that couldn't be it because the wiki doesn't auto-interpret "%23", but I guess that's different.
~ Shataina

Is there a way to indent the first line, as in a paragraph in a book?

You could probably use &nbsp;s, but it's likely better to set up a stylesheet using text-indent. - willows

Is there a way to center a word or phrase?
- HandofOmega2

I don't know if it's the Wiki, but anchor tags don't seem to be working; both on Firefox and IE I just get a page saying "This page is redirecting you to X Page, do you want to do that?", and then doesn't go to the anchor. Am I screwing something up?

Anchors have never worked here. Just don't try. - Trithne
It's true that InterPageLinks don't work, but I think the (unsigned) poster was talking about a new feature of Firefox, that displays a "I'm redirecting you" page instead of just redirecting you. I gather the intent is to help stop phishing from fooling people. - Wordman
That is indeed what I was thinking of. That said, if anchors don't work, we should possibly remove the information on how to place anchors from the Miscellaneous Rules section. (And whoops on the unsigning. I blame tiredness). - FrivYeti
I'd rather we actually just change a single chartacter in the code and fix the &%#$ing bug, but that isn't up to me. - Wordman

Anchors used to work, Trithne, you whippersnapper.  ;) Indeed, I myself wrote the Anchors section after exhaustive experimentation back when I first went over these rules. I guess UseMod has been updated in the interim. That said, I took the time to look at it a little more. It appears that actually typing in an anchor will lead you to it: frex, if you manually enter http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Shataina/ManseCreation##Maintenance into the URL bar, you'll go to the proper place. Linking to it from the wiki is the problem. I don't have time to figure that out right now, but I am sure that someone who bothered to do a little experimentation could.
~ Shataina

No. Linking from the wiki is actually not the problem. The problem is that the anchors include the # character in their name. This requires links like the one you mention above, with two # characters in a row. I've installed the latest version of UseModWiki to test this. It does not have this problem. It builds the anchor with out the extra #, allowing the correct link to work (e.g. http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Shataina/ManseCreation#Maintenance). Basically, the issue is that half of the system (the part that builds the anchors) thinks their should be an extra #, while the other half (the part that builds links to the anchors) does not. It's the first part that is broken, not the second. See InterPageLinks for more examples. - Wordman
I suppose it kinda depends on your definition of "problem", huh? ;) Obviously anchors have always been *technically* broken, it's just a question of whether there's a workaround. There used to be one that worked OK even if it was silly; it's in the rules, but now it doesn't. So we can complain because the system is broken, or we can look for a solution. I sort of enjoy playing with the markup in an effort to find ways to work around these sorts of issues, but you and Trithne etc. apparently don't. So. If you guys aren't going to look for a new way to link to anchors from the wiki -- notwithstanding the fact that it *should* work another way -- then might I suggest that you email Xyphoid? You could also post something to WikiChanges, the page that exists specifically to ask for changes to the wiki, though I don't know if he checks that anymore.
~ S.
I've sent at least two emails about this problem and another specifically indicating I would track down the exact line that needed changing and how to fix it, presuming Xyphoid could tell me what version of the software this board uses. All were met with silence. So, as my attempts to help actually solve the problem have gone nowhere, I'm left with nothing but futile bitching about how colossally and unnecessarily stupid it is. This simple feature could make this wiki so much more useful. - Wordman
Looks like the old version of table formatting doesn't work. Anyone know how to get tables to function in mediawiki? -- IsawaBrian

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