Wiki Text Formatting Rules

Shamelessly cribbed from the original UseModWiki? site, then tweaked mercilessly.

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 <b>, <i>, and <pre> within a page. (Some wikis use raw HTML instead of special formatting rules.)

The following text is an overview of the UseModWiki? 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 "Edit text of this page" at the bottom of the page.

Basic Text Formatting

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

• Carriage returns (ie pressing the Enter key) are significant in formatting a wiki page
• Multiple spaces and tabs are ignored
• Use tags <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i>
• Use tag <tt>for monospace text</tt>
• 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 sub pages for details):
  • " " space causes text to appear in a monospaced font where spaces are significant
  • ":" colon causes text to be indented
  • "\\" double backslash forces a line break.
  • "=" equals - followed by a space - creates a heading, a trailing "=" - preceeded by a space - is required
  • "*" asterisk creates a bulleted list
  • "#" hash creates a numbered list
  • ";" semicolon creates a definition list, a ":" colon is required subsequently on the same line
  • "----" four hyphens creates a horizontal line
  • "||" two vertical bars delineate table entries (the line must start and end with them); prefix the line with a "+" to add borders. By default, the table cells are centered. Insert a "l", "L", or "\" between the bars to make the next cell left-aligned, and a "r", "R", or "/" to make the next cell right-aligned. Multiple sets of double-bars will cause the next cell to span multiple columns.

Repetition of the first character on the line generally increases the indentation or emphasis

• Leave a single blank line between paragraphs.
• Suppress wiki formatting and linking through escaped WikiWiki text -- <nowiki>WikiWiki</nowiki>
• Insert an image using a full URL, eg http://usemod.com/wiki.gif

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. For instance, LowerThanAngels? and TextFormatting are samples of page links.

Nonexistent pages, like SampleUndefinedPage?, will be displayed with a question mark link. The question mark link indicates the page doesn't exist yet--follow the link to create and edit the page. (The sample page used here is a special example page--you can't define it.)

Pages with one-word names can be linked to by including the page name in double-brackets. [[Index]] produces the link Index.

You can display alternate text for an intra-wiki link by putting it after the page name and enclosing it all in brackets. [TextFormatting this page] links back to [this page]. When you do so, the link is highlighted as an in-wiki link, but still shown with brackets to alert the reader that the page's name does not match the text shown, and such flaunting of the WYSIWYG nature of wiki links is generally discouraged.

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 being part of the link.

Empty pages (such as ones whose contents have been moved elsewhere) can be made to point to a different page by setting the top (and only) line of the old page to #REDIRECT NewPageName.

You can link to named anchors on wiki pages just as you would expect, like TextFormatting#URLs. Alternately, you can include descriptive text--[TextFormatting#URLs URLs] which shows up as [URLs]. To create a named anchor in the first place, include it in the page like so, [#URLs], which does not render any visible text.

Pages can also have nested pages. Nested pages automatically have links back to their parents, and you can link from the parent to the nested page by typing just its name preceded by a slash, like /NestedPage?. They can also be accessed from anywhere in the site via the whole name, as TextFormatting/NestedPage?.

URLs that are included inline will display as active links. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox shows up as http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox

URLs may also be placed in brackets and have user-friendly link text following them. [http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SandBox with anchor] shows up as [with anchor]

Lastly, there is the InterWiki? link feature. Certain other wikis are known about, and links can be made to pages located there using colons. UseMod:InterWiki shows up as UseMod?:InterWiki?

Headings and other Document Divisions

To get a horizontal divider, use:

----

...which looks like:

---

To get a headings, use:

= Title =
== Chapter ==
=== Section ===
==== Subsection ====

...which look like:

Title

Chapter

Section

Subsection

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.

Tables

Borderless tables:

|| This || is || a ||
|| borderless || table. || (For spacing) ||
|| With |\| left || and ||
|/| right || aligned || text ||
|||||| Multiple double-bars result in column-spanning ||

...which look like:

This	is	a
borderless	table.	(For spacing)
With	left	and
right	aligned	text
Multiple double-bars result in column-spanning

Bordered tables:

+|| This || is || a ||
+|| table || with ||  borders. ||
+|| With |\| left || and ||
+|/| right || aligned || text ||
+|||||| Multiple double-bars result in column-spanning ||

...which look like:

This	is	a
table	with	borders.
With	left	and
right	aligned	text
Multiple double-bars result in column-spanning

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

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

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 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.

Miscellaneous rules

• To quote text without applying the wiki formatting rules, enclose it within a <nowiki> ... </nowiki> section. Within a nowiki section, only HTML-quoting of special characters (<>&) will occur--no other formatting rules will be applied.
• A line which ends in a backslash 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.]

HTML

• Encoding the "<" less than, ">" greater than, and "&" ampersand characters is optional.
• Characters such as <, © and ∞ may be encoded on pages as: "&gt;", "&copy;", and "&infin;", respectively. See http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html.