HowTo

note: This howto is copied from [EmacsWiki HowTo] with minor modifications.

A wiki is a collaborative web site. Anybody can contribute. Every page has a link at the bottom that allows you to edit it. A good place to create your first page is CategoryHomepage.

• UserName has more information on the usernames used on this wiki.

Text Formatting Rules

Use the SandBox page to test the wiki!

The most important rules are very simple:

• Empty lines separate paragraphs.
• Paragraphs may span several lines.
• Paragraphs begin in column 1.

Links:

• Plain URLs get hyperlinked (`http://www.mrblog.org/').
• Plain URLs that point to images get inlined (`http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs_logo.png').
• Plain URLs in square brackets turn into numbered links, looking like footnotes (`[http://www.mrblog.org/]').
• Plain URLs plus some text in square brackets result in the text being linked to the URL (`[http://www.emacswiki.org/ Emacs Wiki]'). The square brackets will remain visible in order to distinguish these links from links to local pages.
• Local pages are linked using various link patterns. Traditionally, CamelCase words are links to local pages. In addition to that, words in [[double square brackets]] are also links to local pages. These square brackets will not be rendered if the page exists, since this links to a local page.

Lists, tables, indented paragraphs:

• List items start with one to three asterixes (`*'). The number of asterixes indicates the indentation level.
• Numbered list items start with a hashes (`#'). The number of hashes indicates the indentation level.
• Definition lists start with a semicolon (`;'), and a colon (`:') between term and definition.
• Table rows start and end with two vertical bars (`||'), with two vertical bars between cells. Empty cells fuse with the next cell, ie. ||||bar|| is a table row with a cell spanning two columns.
• Indented lines start with one or more colons (`:'). The number of colons indicates the indentation level.
• An empty line separates paragraphs and ends lists.

Headings:

• Headings are enclosed in equal signs (`=') on a line of their own. You can use up to six equal signs to produce headers of level one to six. Level one is the most important one, and should not be used because the page title already uses a level one heading. Using two or three equal signs is recommended (`== like this =='). Be sure to separate the equal signs from the text with at least one space.

Horizontal line:

• Four or more consecutive hypens on a line of their own (`----') are replaced with a horizontal line.

Source code:

• Lines starting with spaces are shown using a fixed width font with whitespace preserved. I suggest to use a uniform indentation of four spaces.

Traditional wiki markup is also supported:

''two apostrophs''

Italics

'''three apostrophs'''

Bold

Some HTML tags are also allowed.

em

Emphasis (usually italics)

i

Italics

strong

Strong (usually bold)

b

Bold

tt

Teletype (usually monospaced)

The following tags have special effects:

nowiki

disable text formatting rules

code

monospaced font, disable text formatting rules

pre

monospaced fonts, no line wrapping, disable text formatting rules

Remove Mail Addresses

Remove email adresses from any material you post and transform the original name into a link to their homepage on this wiki. If people want to reveal their email addresses on their homepage, fine.

Remove email addresses even if you are copying an interesting article from a newsgroup. Remove email addresses even from source code comments. Provide enough headers such that interested parties can use search engines such as http://groups.google.com to determine the email address of the original address (I suggest the name of the author, subject, newsgroups, and date).

Leave email addresses for mailing lists.

Creating New Pages

• Method 1: Edit a page that you want to link to your new page and insert a wiki word for that link. Create this word according to the directions below under Naming New Pages. Basically, a word of mixed case will be treated as a wiki word. You then save the page. The new link will have a question mark after it which is hyperlinked. Follow that hyperlink and you will be creating the new page.

• Method 2: This is called url munging. Visit http://www.toyz.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?NewWikiWord and you will create a new page.

Naming New Pages

Here's some help for choosing page names:

• If the name is short, such as Sql or Tcl, add "Mode" if you are somehow describing an Emacs mode. Therefore: SqlMode, TclMode.
• For something as big as Gnus, you can expect a lot of sub pages. Therefore just make it a category: CategoryGnus.
• If something is an abbreviation or acronym, just spell it out: WThreeM.
• If the page contains your configuration for a specific package, use the suffix -Configuration, eg. BbdbConfiguration.
• If you still can't find a good name, just append "Page". I haven't seen this used on other wikis. They usually use ugly capitalization tricks such as UgLy. Oh well. TrampPage is nice because you can use it to say, "For more information, see the TrampPage.

Add Tags to Indicate Things that Need Fixing

If you find that something is wrong, incomplete, or otherwise in need of a tweak, you may want to add a FIXME tag in your comment, so that others will notice that there's something there that needs fixing. There's a canned search on the FrontPage where you can find all pages which contain this text.

Please don't remove a FIXME comment unless you are actually fixing the problem it describes. If you disagree with a comment that says something is wrong, you should perhaps start a discussion about whether the thing in fact needs to be fixed; you may want to move this discussion the OpenQuestions page, or create a page of its own if the discussion will have lasting value.

If you want to include the word FIXME somewhere where it is not in fact a "fix this" comment, you can use the "nowiki" tag in the middle of the word to prevent it from showing up in the search engine. (See the formatting rules link, above, or simply open up the editor for this page to see how this paragraph was formatted.)