Help:Help
- Conventions
- a few thoughts about a few conventions currently in use
- How to Get Your Xenwiki Account
- an account is necessary to edit articles, it provides also a user talk page
- Editor yourName
- say a few words about you as a wiki editor
- user pages
- user pages also serve as the temporary "host" (root) for subpages where complicated edits are carried out
If you have any (seemingly) unsolvable problem, look or ask for a solution on the talk page, Thanks :-)
Wikis should be easy to edit, so most text you add or change will appear as you expect it. But you can do more if you want.
This wiki is currently in login-to-edit mode after the move from Wikispaces to MediaWiki-based installation (the edit mode may change again some time). For editing or adding information to the wiki, you have to join the wiki. See How to Get Your Xenwiki Account for more!
Using links[edit]
What you always have dreamed of (for your paper notes) - in a wiki it becomes true: fast links!
If you enclose a word in double brackets (like [[word]]), you get an internal link, hopefully to an already existing page - if not, it appears red, and you just created the opportunity for your co-authors to add the details. If you want a text differing from the link target, you can place it after a pipe symbol: [[word|different text]].
For external links, simply place the URL into the text, certain protocols (http, https, mailto) will be automatically transformed into links. For alternate text, use single brackets, start with the URL and after a space enter the title, like so [http://acid3.acidtests.org the Acid3 test] which renders to the Acid3 test.
Link text[edit]
tbd
The link text should relate to the link target, don't use "here".
Redirects[edit]
There are 3 types of redirects: soft redirect, regular redirect and hard redirect.
A "soft redirect" or "smart redirect" is just an ordinary page with the text "See XYZ.", where XYZ is a link to the target of the smart redirect. A smart redirect should not point to another smart redirect - if you see this you should fix it by shortcutting past the second one and making the first redirect point directly to the ultimate target.
A regular redirect is performed by #REDIRECT [[Page title]]. A double redirect should be fixed by the same method as above, or by replacing it with a hard redirect. Regular redirects did not exist in wikispaces. This kind of redirect displays a small information message when it was used to display the current page.
Real or "hard" redirects directly go to the target page without a notice of redirect. Therefore, they should only be used in the case of simple misspellings or alternate spellings. The rule is that if anyone might ever want to flesh the redirect out into its own article, it should not be a hard redirect. Hard redirects can be chained with no problem, which is why they're still appropriate to use for misspellings. The code for a hard redirect in MediaWiki is #REDIRECT [[:en:Page title]]. Hard redirects worked somewhat differently in wikispaces; only admins could create or change them, and they could not redirect to a section.
see also
- http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/tuning/conversations/topics/101227 - redirects were discussed on the tuning list in the Wikispaces era
- list of pages tagged as soft redirect - pages that contain only see [[''some other page'']] (be cautious with other tags on these)
- list of pages tagged as smart redirect - pages that have more information (a small definition, classification etc.)
Text formatting[edit]
Emphasis[edit]
Some typographic markup can easy be added by including the phrase in doubled or tripled ' (apostrophe chars):
- italic using ''italic''
- bold using '''bold'''
- bold italic using '''''bold italic'''''
An alternative method is to set any typographic weight. It comes in a scale.
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Lists[edit]
See list model for ways to write a list.
Tables[edit]
You can add tables to wiki pages:
| what you write |
{| class="wikitable"
|+ The Title
! column A
! column B
|-
| cell A1
| cell B1
|-
| cell A2
| cell B2
|}
| ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| what you get |
|
Adjusting Text Alignment[edit]
The table cells are left aligned by default, the heading cells are center aligned. You may change this via inline CSS style definitions:
| what you want for the cell | what you do to get it |
|---|---|
| left aligned text | nothing to do |
| centered text | place style="text-align:center;" | after the opening pipe
|
| right aligned | place style="text-align:center;" | after the opening pipe
|
| headline style | exclamation mark instead of the pipe symbol starts the cell |
If you want to override the default text alignment for all cells, place the inline CSS (for example style="text-align:center;") directly at the beginning of the table, right after the class="wikitable" statement.
External helper tools[edit]
If you have to construct really complex tables with colspans and rowspans, you may use this online table generator:
Generate tables in MediaWiki format - TablesGenerator.com
For example, this wiki markup
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="3" | 1
! 2
! 3
|-
| rowspan="2" | A
| colspan="3" | B
| C
|-
| rowspan="2" colspan="2" | D
| colspan="2" | E
|-
| F
| G
| H
|}
will be rendered into this table:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | ||
| D | E | |||
| F | G | H | ||
Images[edit]
Inserting a JPEG or PNG image is pretty straightforward - when using the visual page editor click the "File" button and upload the image. Or in Wikitext, use [[image:filename]]. SVG images are possible but require a bit more work; see SVG images on wiki pages for details.
Maths formulas[edit]
...can be used like in the Wikipedia: start it with <math> and end it with </math>. Take care: using the math tags will break paragraphs. See for example
Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle \#include <math.h>\\ double\ note[128];\\ for(int\ i=0; i<128; i++)\{\\ \ \ \ \ note[i] = 440.0*pow(2.0, (i-69.0)/12.0);\\ \}}
Here is a browser-based formula editor that may be helpful: http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
Table of contents[edit]
Place __TOC__ where you wish to place the table of contents, mostly this will be at the top of the page.
Social aspects[edit]
In this wiki, you can use talk pages and user talk pages.
If you want to discuss the wiki itself, do it on the page wikifuture.
Categories[edit]
Categories all serve different purposes: sometimes they say what something is or the context in which it belongs (Category:edo, Category:interval). Sometimes they are used for annotation purposes (Category:todo:reduce mathslang), etc. All these forms have in common is that they can combine wiki pages in a way that is independent of their authors.
A category may have its own content (and category)
or not yet (despite being used to categorize other pages):
Some more examples:
- todo:add definition - here a term needs to be defined
- Category:Todo - category of categories that flag articles
Discussion[edit]
Discussion pages are provided to each content page. Please keep in mind that the email notification to people who are observing the page cannot be taken back!
Sometimes you will wait forever for a reply because nobody monitors the page or topic. In this case you should find out who is most familiar with the topic and ask that person directly. You can check the history of pages for its authors. Another approach is to ask questions on further media, examples are listed on the page GeneralDiscussion.