CollabWiki: Wiki Text

WikiText Proposal Summary (NI)

2002-Dec-29 GaroldJohnson (NJ)

EText and WikiText (NK)

EText (NL): A system to interpret existing plain text with minimal markup. (NM)

WikiText (NN): A markup system to generate both readable plain text and well formatted output documents. (NO)

Both are somewhat related to templating systems which generally support programming language capabilities of various sorts. (NP)

WikiText Principles (NQ)

Rules should be simple and consistent even if this impacts readability. Programmers can develop code that is smarter than people can figure out quickly. Don't try to be *too* smart. (NR)

HTML has stood the test of time. We are not likely to improve on its features, so we should support only features available in HTML. (NS)

WikiText markup should be easy to read in plain text and easy to write on the fly. More complex features may require more effort. (NT)

Things that look the same act the same. Spaces and tabs must have the same behavior. Multiple lines look like wordwrapped lines and will be treated as such. (NU)

It must not be necessary to count spaces. Counting visible characters is (barely) acceptable; counting invisible characters is not. Indentation to control hierarchy can be used only if the levels are denoted in some other way. (NV)

To the extent possible, it should be possible to use WikiText for multiple purposes -- Wiki, email, text notes, web site generation, etc. (NW)

WikiText Formation Rules (NX)

Block Markup (NY)

A block is marked as special by leading special characters followed by a space. Repeating the leading character increases the logical indentation level. (NZ)

   Char Block Type
    =           Heading; followed by <space> and same number of equal signs.
    *           Bulleted list
    #           Numbered list
    ;           Definition list
    :           Indent text
    %           Directive or variable
    |           Table
    <space>     Monospaced    (O0)

Paragraphs are delimited by blank lines or block markup lines. (O1)

Verbatim Text (O2)

Indented text following a paragragh that ends in a double colon is verbatim. A single colon is left in the text. (O3)

Inline Markup (O4)

Inline markup consists of a text between two marks surrounded by spaces. (O5)

Inline markup has a pattern of <space> <mark> <non-space> <text> <non-space><mark> <space>, where the bounding spaces may be begin and end of the line. (O6)

   Char         Markup
    *           Bold
    _           Italic
    '           Monospaced <code>
    =           Monospaced <tt>
    ^           Boxed
    %           Directive or variable
    [ ]         Links    (O7)

WikiWords consist of capitalized words run together. It`s not like a suduko puzzle suduko at all. A WikiWord automatically creates a link to a page of the same name. If there is no page, a question mark with a link to create the page follows the word. (O9)

WikiWords may be rendered with spaces to improve readability. (OA)

Some variations allow numbers and some punctuation as well as lower case characters or doubled capitals at the beginning. These would make the following legal WikiWords: (OB)

   EText, TWiki -- Doubled initial capitals    (OC)

   PageN200? -- Numbers as well as lower case.    (OD)

Links (OE)

WikiWords create links. (OF)

InterWiki? link: UseMod:InterWiki -- UseMod:InterWiki (OG)

All raw URLs with prefixes generate links. (OH)

A phrase in square brackets is a WikiWord -- [eText with other stuff] (OI)

A link with anchor text is a URL followed by text in square brackets -- [http://www.yahoo.com Yahoo] (OJ)

Anchors (Purple Numbers ) (OK)

Anchors are generated by the Wiki as purple numbers. (OL)

To link to an anchor name use the [MyTopic?#<Purple Number>] syntax. (OM)

You can omit the topic name if you want to link within the same topic. (ON)

To link to an anchor externally, append the node id -- http://collab.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HomePage#nid06 (OO)

Other Formatting (OP)

Horizintal rule -- 4 or more dashes on a line by themselves. (OQ)

Line breaks -- Several options including the <br> tag. (OR)

The <nop> tag can be used to supress inline formatting -- WikiPage?<nop>s creates a plural with a link to the singular. <nop>*not bold* (OS)

Directives and Variables (OT)

Directives and variables are not supported in all systems. (OU)

A % at the beginning of a line introduces either: (OV)

A variable assignment -- %Variable = value (OW)

(1DE)
- There are usually several predefined variables to provide the page author with access to infomration from the system. (OX)

A directive with an argument list. (OY)

A comment if followed by another % (OZ)

(1DF)
- This could be extended to allow the character following an initial percent to define the equivalent of "pragmas" of various types. (P0)

Inline, a variable or directive enclosed in percent signs is replaced by the value of the variable or the result of the directive. A percent sign is doubled to make it literal. The exact markup varies. (P1)

Note that directives that do not start at the beginning of a line are treated as user text. By using a double percent, it is possible to write about directives with no danger that they will be executed. (P2)

Table Syntax (P3)

The cells enclosed in vertical bars. (P4)

Note: | *bold* | cells are rendered as table headers. (P5)

Note: | spaced | cells are rendered center aligned. (P6)

Note: | spaced| cells are rendered right aligned. (P7)

Note: | 2 colspan || cells are rendered as multi-span columns. (P8)

Note: In case you have a long row and you want it to be more readable when you edit the table you can split the row into lines that end with a '\' backslash character. (P9)

Defaults to bordered tables. (PA)

Issues (PB)

Multiple Paragraphs in Lists (PC)

It is often useful to have multiple paragraphs in a list item and have them all indented to the same level as the list. (PD)

Using a line break tag is probably the easiest from a programming point of view, but it isn't the most readable. (PE)

Varieties of Numbered Lists (PF)

There are a number of label types for ordered lists. How do we deal with them? (PG)

1. text an enumerated list a. text alphabetical enumerated list A. text uppercase alphabetical enumerated list i. text roman enumerated list I. text uppercase roman enumerated list g. text greek enumerated list h. text hiragana (japanese) enumerated list k. text katakana (japanese) enumerated list (PH)

Trailing Equals on Headings (PI)

Q: Should headings require trailing equal signs? (PJ)

Pro: (PK)

Using the trailing equals on headings gives a nice visual appearance. (PL)

It also makes for unambiguous ending of a title that might continue onto a second line or even use the "=" somewhere. The back-slant convention could be used instead, but that has its own problems. Orcmid (YX)

UseModWiki will make them balance when it stores the text. (PM)

Con: (PN)

No other block markup requires trailing markup. (PO)

I'd like to encourage consideration of a heading markup that is the same length for all heading levels, and explicitly includes the heading level. For example (building on my TWiki background): "---+1" for Level 1 thru "---+6" for Level 6. The reasons relate to my attempts to create (single heading) fold macros for editing TWiki files with Nedit, and the difficulty of doing that Promotional Products Corporate Gifts because Nedit RE's (at least) do not allow a variable multiplier. I.e., I'd like to do something like search for "---\+{1,a}?{?= }" inside a loop where a is decremented from 5 to 1 (along with some other processing). See http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Code v/RfcModifiedTWikiHeadingMarkup? for a little more information and links to even more (I hope). ---- (S0)

Additional Features in Tables (PP)

HTML supports Promotional Items a lot more features than this version of WikiText. All attempts at specifying these additional features have added substantial complexity to the markup. (PQ)

Multiple Lines in Table Cells (PR)

This is easy to represent but very difficult to parse. It also involves counting spaces. (PS)

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WikiText