Wiki: WikiMarkup

The markup for Barghest is intended to be a variant of WikiCreole, but with a few modifications particular to the application of hosting Ghilbert proofs. The details of the syntax are still somewhat fluid, and discussion is welcome.

This markup is intended both for the Web server and for text appearing in .gh and .ghi files. When used in Ghilbert files, each line of markup is preceded by a hash mark(#) and a space. Lines beginning with a hash mark and a character other than space or alphanumeric are reserved. The space is optional when it ends the line (i.e. is used as a paragraph separator).

Paragraphs are separated by a blank line. Four special paragraph types exist:

Four dashes (----) is a horizontal rule
A paragraph starting with one or more asterisks (*) is a list item. The nesting level is equal to the number of asterisks.
A paragraph starting with two or more equal signs is a heading.
A line beginning with three curly braces {{{ is preformatted.

Within a paragraph, //double slashes// make italics, and **double asterisks** make bold. Bold italics are possible by nesting both types. In any position other than the beginning of a line, {{{triple curly braces}}} make preformatted text, with no markup applied.

Anything enclosed in [square brackets] is interpreted as a link. The link component can be one of:

A wiki page name, as in [Barghest] (renders as Barghest).
A url, as in [http://ghilbert.org/] (renders as http://ghilbert.org/).
user/username, as in [user/raph] (renders as Raph Levien). The link renders as the real name, not the username (how confusing is this?).

In addition, pipe syntax for substituting the text of a link is supported, as in [http://us.metamath.org/|Metamath home page] (renders as Metamath home page).

Embedded Ghilbert content

Anything between two # marks is considered Ghilbert content. The Ghilbert functionality is not online yet, so as a placeholder it just links to a Metamath proof page.

Why #? Because # represents comments inside .gh and .ghi files, it cannot legally appear in any term. Thus, it can unambiguously represent the end of the content, without having to count parentheses. In addition to making parsing simpler, error checking is also more robust in the case where the parentheses do not nest correctly.

Differences from the WikiCreole 0.3 spec

Line breaks do not create <br /> markup. Since the markup will be in Ghilbert files, it's important not to require long lines to avoid broken paragraphs.
Markup in headers is parsed (but not links).
Single char _ and * markup is allowed for italics and bold, respectively. I might back these out.
Both [single] and [[double]] bracket syntax is allowed for links, with currently no distinction.
A space is required after a list bullet. This removes some ambiguity about whether a list or boldface is desired.

Things added to basic WikiCreole

Backslash escaping is permitted. As is usual, a raw backslash can be represented with \\.
# syntax for Ghilbert content.

Missing WikiCreole features

Most of these missing features will probably be added at some point (and a clean patch is likely to be accepted).

Ordered lists (#).
Images.
Tables.

Last edited 2006-12-28 01:05:35 by Raph Levien