Slide 5: Applications of basic TWiki

• A white board
• A document repository
• A collaborative authoring environment
• A notebook / scrapbook
• A communications hub

Slide 6: Extended applications

• A content management system
• A project management system
• A presentation development tool
• A database
• A tracking tool
• An issue resolution system

Slide 7: Structure of a TWiki page

• A header
• A body
• A footer
• A left menu bar

• The header, footer, and left menu bar are generated by the system
• The body contains the text of the page, as entered by you

Slide 8: The Page Header

• The bread crumb trail shows the path to your current page like this -- You are here: TWiki.org > Main Web > WelcomeGuest
• Jump - lets you type in the name of a page you already know
• Search lets you type in text for a search engine
• Buttons for Editing, Editing with WYSIWYG, and Attachments are on the right side of the header
• A button for Printable formating will reformat the page for printing

Slide 9: The Left Menu Bar

It will also usually contain a number of 'links' that you can click on. You will generally see:

• Create New Topic - lets you create a new page using a template
• Search - takes you to a search page, where you can search all the text
• Changes - gives you a list of recent changes
• Notifications - takes you to a page where you can sign up for email notifications when topics change

You may also see in the left menu bar a list of the TWiki "webs." A web is a collection of pages that are related closely together

• For example, we have a web called "Main", where we keep all we know about the Oracle Applications
• There is a safe play web called "Sandbox", where you can create pages just to try things out
• And some administration topics like "TWiki"

Slide 10: The Page Footer

• The Edit link takes you to an interactive page where you can change the page content
• The Attach link lets you attach files
• The other links invoke other, more complex, functions, mainly to do with revision tracking - they can safely be ignored for now

Slide 11: Editing Pages

• You've read a page, and you disagree with it violently! It says:
  Everyone knows that the world is an OblateSpheroid
  But you know for a fact it is flat!
• You've clicked the edit link, and an edit page has appeared. But it doesn't look much like what was on the page before - it's full of strange hieroglyphics!

• Now what?

Slide 12: What's in a page

• The hieroglyphics are what's known as "TWiki Markup" or "formatting"
• They are a really simple way of telling the browser how you want the page to look
• You don't have to use them
  • TWiki understands pages in plain text just fine.
    
    Actually it is perfectly and absolutely flat
    
    appears as
    
    Actually it is perfectly and absolutely flat

Slide 13: Formatting just makes pages prettier

A full description of all the formatting can be found in the pages for WikiSyntax and TextFormattingRules. The best thing to do is just to type until you get stuck then follow the Show Help link on the edit page to the help.

Slide 14: Commonly used formatting

• ---+ indicates a heading. Add more +'s for a deeper heading.

  You type	You see
  ---+ This is a heading	This is a heading
  ---++ And so is this	And so is this

• %TOC% will insert a table of contents
  

Slide 15: More common formatting

• A blank line gives a paragraph break
  
• --- on a line of its own gives a horizontal bar
• Text in stars *like this* looks bold like this
  
• Text in underscores _like this_ looks like this
  
• Text in equals signs =like this= looks like this
  
• Bulleted lists use three spaces followed by an asterisk (*) at the start of the line
  • The depth of the bullet is given by the number of spaces, in multiples of three

• Numbered lists use a number in place of the *. The list is numbered automatically, so you can just use a 1

Slide 16: Even more.....

• You can create a table using vertical bars:

     | Cat | Feline |
     | Bear | Ursine |
     | Wolf | Vulpine |

• appears as

  Cat	Feline
  Bear	Ursine
  Wolf	Vulpine

• %RED% .... %ENDCOLOR% will change the colour of the enclosed text. Lots of colors are available (%RED%, %GREEN%, %BLUE% etc)

Slide 17: WikiWords

• One special hieroglyph that is very important is a BumpyWord
  • a word that starts with uppercase, then some lowercase, then more uppercase (a.k.a CamelCase)
• This has a special meaning to TWiki; if it matches the name of another topic, TWiki will automatically create a link to that page for you.
• If there is no such page, then the word is highlighted and a question mark is put after the word, LikeThis?
• If you click on the question mark, then TWiki will invite you to create that page.
• This lets you enter the names of topics you think should exist, but don't yet
  • You, or someone else, can always come along later and click on the question mark!

Slide 18: Referencing other pages and URLs

• BumpyWords automatically link to the target page
  • You can make these links easier to read using square brackets:
    • [[BumpyWords][bumpy words]] appears as bumpy words
• An ordinary URL pasted into text will appear as a link - http://www.google.com
  • You can also prettify URLs using square brackets:
    • [[http://www.google.com/][Google]] appears as Google
• Use %SEARCH. This is an interface to a sophisticated search engine that embeds the results of the search in your page

Slide 19: More formatting

• There's lots more formatting available, see WikiWords and WikiSyntax for more information
• If you are a real masochist, you can even enter raw HTML tags!
• Important to disable unwanted formatting, use <nop>
  • <nop>_word_ appears as _word_

Slide 20: Creating new pages

• Alternative ways:
  • Click on the Create New Topic link in the left tool bar
  • Click on the question mark after a BumpyWord
  • Type in the name of the topic in the "Jump:" box
  • Type in the name of the topic in the URL of your browser
• Any time you try to visit a page that doesn't exist, TWiki will invite you to create it.
• Make sure the names of topics are always BumpyWords.

Slide 21: Attachments

• Attachments are files which have been uploaded and attached to a TWiki page using the 'Attach' function in the footer.

Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
myco.gif	manage	9.6 K	13 Feb 2004 - 18:41	MushroomMagicMan	Attached image file

• Attachments are simply files, in whatever format you want.
• TWiki recognizes some file formats, notably image files (.gif)
  • Write %ATTACHURL%/myco.gif to see this:

Slide 22: Wiki Culture

• What can I edit?
  • Almost anything (if you are a registered member). But it's good etiquette to sign your contributions
  • If someone doesn't want you to edit a page, it's up to them to say so, clearly, on the page
• But what if somebody doesn't like my edits?
  • In TWiki, they can always recover the old revision and re-instantiate it if they really want to
  • Otherwise they should regard your changes as an opportunity for discussion
• Pages in wiki are (usually) in one of three "modes"
  • DocumentMode
  • ThreadMode
  • StructuredMode

Slide 23: DocumentMode

• A page in DocumentMode usually comprises a contribution which is written in the third person and left unsigned
• The piece of text is community property
  • It may have multiple and changing authors as it is updated to reflect the community consensus

Slide 24: ThreadMode

• Thread mode is a form of discussion where the community holds a conversation
• The discussion usually starts out with a statement, at the top of the page, that is subsequently discussed
• The page may be periodically "refactored" (edited) to remove some of the comments
  • As long as the comment is accurately reflected in what replaces it, nobody usually minds
  • Remember to always maintain a complete list of contributors, though!

• ThreadMode is rather like an e-mail thread
  • Except that new comments are usually added to the end
• ThreadMode pages often get refactored into DocumentMode

Slide 25: StructuredMode

• A page in StructuredMode follows some predefined structure for example
  • An agenda
  • A set of meeting minutes
  • A requirement description
• Pages in StructuredMode will usually have rules governing how they are edited

Slide 26: Contributed features

Here's a brief description of some of the more common plugins, together with the tags you might expect to see in topics if they are used. You can find out more by visiting the plugin pages listed on the next slide.

• ActionTrackerPlugin: Support action tags in topics, with automatic notification of action statuses %ACTION...
• CalendarPlugin: Show a monthly calendar with highlighted events %CALENDAR...%
• CommentPlugin: Support rapid entry of short comments (also known as blogging) %COMMENT...
• EditTablePlugin: Edit TWiki tables using edit fields and drop down boxes %EDITTABLE...

Slide 27: More plugins ...

• RenderListPlugin: Render bullet lists in a variety of formats %RENDERLIST...
• SlideShowPlugin: Create web based presentations based on topics with headings %SLIDESHOWSTART...
• SpreadSheetPlugin: Add spreadsheet calculations like "$SUM( $ABOVE() )" to tables located in TWiki topics %CALC...
• TablePlugin: Control presentation and sorting of tables %TABLE...
• TWikiDrawPlugin: Add quick sketches to pages %DRAWING...

See http://www.twiki.org for more details on Plugins.

The following plugins are installed on this TWiki: GluePlugin, SpreadSheetPlugin, IfDefinedPlugin, AliasPlugin, ActionTrackerPlugin, BreadCrumbsPlugin, CalendarPlugin, ChartPlugin, ChecklistPlugin, CommentPlugin, DBCachePlugin, EditRowPlugin, EditTablePlugin, ExcelImportExportPlugin, ExtendedSelectPlugin, FilterPlugin, FindElsewherePlugin, FlexWebListPlugin, FreeMindPlugin, HeadlinesPlugin, ImagePlugin, InterwikiPlugin, JQueryPlugin, JQueryTwistyPlugin, MeetingBingoPlugin, PreferencesPlugin, QuizPlugin, RedDotPlugin, RenderListPlugin, SlideShowPlugin, SmiliesPlugin, TablePlugin, TagCloudPlugin, TagMePlugin, TimeSincePlugin, TinyMCEPlugin, TreeBrowserPlugin, TreePlugin, TwistyPlugin, VotePlugin, WorkflowPlugin, WysiwygPlugin

Slide 28: Credits and Acknowledgements

• This slide show was adapted by JimCrum from training by TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie on behalf of Oxamer, one of the companies in the Oxford Gene Technology group.
• Valuable contributions were also received from the TWiki Open Source community; special mentions go to:
  • TWiki:Main.WalterMundt
  • TWiki:Main.SvenDowideit

Related topics: WelcomeGuest, TWikiTutorial, GoodStyle, WikiSyntax

Copyright © 2012 by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors. Permission to copy, distribute and/or modify is granted for this document under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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