Wiki Team/Guide/Formatting

For a quick overview of wiki markup see the Wiki Team/Guide/Overview!

Text will show up just as you type it (provided you begin it in the first column). Multiple spaces are compressed, and line endings are ignored (except blank lines).

Use a blank line to start a new paragraph. Multiple blank lines add more vertical space.

Wiki markup code is supposed to be simple and easy to learn. You can also use most HTML markup, if you prefer it, except for links.

Fonts

Use these to change fonts:

Description	You type	You get
Italic text	''italic''	italic
Bold text	'''bold'''	bold
Bold and italic	'''''bold & italic'''''	bold & italic
Fixed-width	<tt>fixed width font </tt>	fixed width font
underscore	<u>underscored text</u>	underscored text

Sections

It is often useful to divide articles into sections and subsections. The following markup can be used. You must begin these on a new line.

Heading	You type	You get	HTML tags
level 1	==Section heading==	Section heading	<h2>...</h2>
level 2	===Subsection heading===	Subsection heading	<h3>...</h3>
level 3	====Sub-sub section heading====	Sub-sub section heading	<h4>...</h4>
level 4	=====Sub-sub-sub section heading=====	Sub-sub-sub section heading	<h5>...</h5>

An article with four or more headings will automatically create a table of contents. Using HTML heading tags also creates proper section headings and a table of contents entry.

Lists

Wiki markup makes lists fairly easy:

List type	You type:	You get:
Bullet list	* one * two * three ** three and one-third ** three and two-thirds	one two three three and one-third three and two-thirds
Numbered list	# one # two<br>spanning several lines<br> without breaking the numbering # three ## three point one ## three point two	one two spanning several lines without breaking the numbering three three point one three point two
Mixture of bulleted and numbered lists	# one # two #* two point one #* two point two	one two two point one two point two
Definition list	;Definition :item 1 :item 2	Definition item 1 item 2

• See also Template:Definition table
• HTML lists are also allowed
• Blank lines should be avoided, they break list numbering and sub-list. Use <br> instead.

Linking

Linking is covered in a separate page: Wiki Team/Guide/Links

Preformatted text

Text which does not begin in the first column of the wiki editing box will be shown indented, in a fixed width font.

For example, this line was preceded by a single space. It preserves whitespace formatting:    A     B     C     D     E     F     G     H     I

A single paragraph of text can be entered with a space in column 1 (the first character position in the wiki editing box) of every line to preserve the raw text format of the entry.

   For example, this block of lines was
   entered with 4 spaces before each line.
   A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I

The parser tags <pre> and </pre> may be entered before and after blocks of preformatted text to preserve the raw format of the text. This is suitable for chat transcripts such as Design_Team/Meetings/2009-03-01.

Line wrapping

Line wrapping can be adjusted with the style property white-space (See http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_white-space.asp)

• With this tag and style, <pre style="white-space:pre-wrap">, whitespace is preserved by the browser. Text will wrap when necessary, and on line breaks.

Code Examples

Raw text is appropriate for showing computer code or command examples, such as this famous little program:

  main(){
    printf("Hello, World!\n");
  }

• Coding format may be embedded in a line of regular text with the <code>code text</code> wiki syntax.

• Blocks of pre-existing code (often with structured linebreaks) may be preserved by entering a space before  <nowiki> in the first wiki page column as in this example:

<nowiki>class DatastoreResultSet(BaseResultSet):
    """Encapsulates the result of a query on the datastore
    """
    def __init__(self, query, page_size):

        if query.get('query', '') and not query['query'].startswith('"'):
            query_text = ''
            words = query['query'].split(' ')
            for word in words:
                if word:
                    if query_text:
                        query_text += ' '
                    query_text += word + '*'

            query['query'] = query_text

        BaseResultSet.__init__(self, query, page_size)

    def find(self, query):
        entries, total_count = _get_datastore().find(query, PROPERTIES,
                                                     byte_arrays=True)

        for entry in entries:
            entry['mountpoint'] = '/'

        return entries, total_count</nowiki>

The result looks like the following:

class DatastoreResultSet(BaseResultSet):
    """Encapsulates the result of a query on the datastore
    """
    def __init__(self, query, page_size):

        if query.get('query', '') and not query['query'].startswith('"'):
            query_text = ''
            words = query['query'].split(' ')
            for word in words:
                if word:
                    if query_text:
                        query_text += ' '
                    query_text += word + '*'

            query['query'] = query_text

        BaseResultSet.__init__(self, query, page_size)

    def find(self, query):
        entries, total_count = _get_datastore().find(query, PROPERTIES,
                                                     byte_arrays=True)

        for entry in entries:
            entry['mountpoint'] = '/'

        return entries, total_count

Stopping Text flow

See mediawikiwiki:Help:Images#Stopping_the_text_flow.

Tables

Tables are covered in a separate page: Help:Tables

nowiki

Use <nowiki> to insert text that is not parsed by the wiki, e.g.,

<nowiki>====Heading 4====</nowiki>

will result in ====Heading 4====, rather than the creation of an actual heading, Heading 4

Categories

An important navigational tool in the wiki is the use of categories. It is customary to include one or more category tags to the end of a page to indicate in what topical area the page belongs. For example, this page should be listed under the [[Category:General public]] and [[Category:HowTo]] categories. You can create a new category, if really necessary, simply by including a new category tag, e.g., [[Category:My new category]].

Templates

Another tool that helps make the wiki more readily navigable is the use of templates (Please select the Template namespace in the pull-down menu on the Special:Allpages page to view the current list of available templates). Templates provide a consistent look to pages as well as a shorthand for communicating things like {{Stub}} and {{Requesttranslation}}. Feel free to ask for help (here) regarding creating new templates you may need.

Translation

We have a mechanism for maintaining multilingual versions of pages in the wiki. Please see Translation Team/Wiki Translation for more information about translations. We also recommend the use of the Google machine translation for pages that have yet to be translated by a human expert. To see a Google translation, simply use the dropdown selector in the sidebar.

See Also

• Meta-Wiki Help:Contents
• Wiki Team/Guide/Overview
• MediaWiki Manual: Formatting