TWiki Shorthand Basics

If you can enter text, you're ready for TWiki. With a few simple, intuitive text formating rules, you'll be able to use plain text to create well-styled postings, instantly. Here's a fast-track guide to shorthand basics...

The New Editor

First, there are two editors now in TWiki. A WYSIWYG editor became the default in mid 2008 after most of the kinks were worked out of it. If you are new to this site, just click on the edit button and you will get the editing screen with a tool bar that helps you. Click the "Edit Help" link to pop up window. With this tool bar you can ...

• Select heading levels, normal text, and protected raw TWiki command.
• Set text attributes to bold, italics, or different color.
• Create bullet or numbered lists and indent or outdent text blocks
• Build links or insert an anchor
  
• Manage attachment files
• Insert an image
• Work with tables
• Switch to HTML or raw TWiki Edit mode

The Old Editor

While the WYSIWYG editor can handle most of the quick edits, some technical things are better done with the raw edit mode. Raw Edit is accessed from the bottom menu bar and puts you in an edit window that expects the TWiki Markup Language (TML). Here are some examples of the old style commands that were in use in 2007 and before.

• Separate each paragraph with a blank line.

• To display a word or phrase in bold type, put it in asterisks: bold type.

• To display a word or phrase in italic, put it in underscores: _italic_.

• To display a word or phrase in bold italic, put it in double underscores: __bold italic__.

• To automatically link to another Wiki topic, type the WikiWord for that topic. To link to a Wiki topic in another web, type the name of the web, and a dot, first: Sandbox.WebHome.

• If you enter a WikiWord for a topic that doesn't exist, it'll appear highlighted, with question mark at the end, prompting you (or someone else) to start off the new topic by clicking the ? - NewTopic? (click the ?, but don't save, to preserve the example!).

• When entering WikiName signatures - like, guest - include "Main." as a prefix, since all TWiki member pages are in the Main web: Main.YourName.

• For an external link, type the full URL: http://twiki.org/.

• To prevent a WikiWord from becoming a link, type <nop> or an exclamation point first: <nop>NoLinkPlease or !NoLinkPlease.

• To indent with a bullet, enter [space][space][space][asterisk][space].
  • Use multiples of 3 spaces to start nested bullets.
    • That's 3-6-9-...

• To create a numbered list:
  1. Start items in a numbered list with [space][space][space][1][space].
  2. The "1" (or any number) will be replaced by the correct number, in order.
  3. To add a new paragraph without restarting list numbering, use the %BR% variable, like below:
     Text added (in new paragraph)
  4. and list numbering continues.

• Always start counting spaces for bullets and such from the beginning of a new line.

• To include an image, type its URL. You also can Attach an image to the page and display it with text
  %ATTACHURL%/yourimagefilename.jpg

• To display a word or phrase in MONOSPACED TYPE, put it in equal signs: =like this=.
  Use ==two== for bold: bold mono.

• Use <verbatim> to enclose code excerpts, filenames, and other unformatted text:
  <verbatim>
  unformatted text!
  </verbatim>
  
  NOTE: VARIABLES can be set within verbatim tags, that is, they are not disabled

• Use <literal> to enclose anything that TWiki must not touch under any circumstances, such as in-line HTML code.

• Follow GoodStyle recommendations when editing topics.

• See TextFormattingRules for the complete set of formatting rules.

Other Links

• GoodStyle, SiteTutorial, ATasteOfTWiki

-- JimCrum - 12 Mar 2007