Creole Additions

This page is in no way yet official. This is somewhat a sandbox for starting work on a Creole Additions page. This would have optional markup that wiki developers can choose whether they wish to implement or not.

Plug-in/Extension#

For those wiki engines which wish to support plug-ins, we recommend three double angle brackets:

 <<CurrentTimePlugin format='yyyy.MM.dd'>> 

Output: 2024.11.22

see GenericExtensionElementProposal and HintsOnExtending

Monospace#

For those wiki engines which wish to support monospace, we recommend the following syntax.

 This is ##monospace## text. 

Recommended XHTML: This is <tt>monospace</tt> text.

Output: This is monospace text.

Comparison: http://www.wikimatrix.org/syntax.php?i=28

Escape Character#

It is often troublesome to use the nowiki in-line to display symbols of wiki syntax, so it would be useful to have an escape character that could be put before wiki syntax to prevent it from being interpreted. The tilde was chosen not to conflict with line breaks and because it is a very infrequently used character. It is not generally easy to type, but it will also not need to be used often, so in this sense it is also suitable.

The escape character only escapes in certain combinations. This means that e.g. the tilde in this use case is displayed as tilde and not escaped. It would certainly never escape if followed by a space or an alphanumeric character.

http://stud.hs-heilbronn.de/~someone

Escape characters only trigger if you use it in combination with the occurrence of a character that has special meaning in creole and would otherwise be rendered as markup. For example if you use "tilde + equal sign as first characters in a line" it will escape the equal sign and display it as such because otherwise it would be rendered as heading.

=Heading
~=Line starting with equal sign, this displays a normal tilde: ~

If an escape character is only used in certain combinations we have a minimum of collisions with existing markup. For example if an wiki uses tilde as normal markup, it would not collide with e.g.

~=This is a heading
~this is subscript in certain wikis~
~~=This is a sentence with a tilde and an equal sign at the beginning... (tilde escapes itself)

Here's a complete list that would cause the escape character (e.g. tilde) to trigger escaping of the following character combinations. This can be extended as need be. Note also that an escape character can be escaped by putting a space after it, since a space cannot be escaped.

Escapes Markup      Combination Constraint              Example:
==============      ==========================          =========
Bold                Anywhere                            ~**
Italics             Anywhere                            ~//
Unordered Lists     Hyphen, first chars in line         ~-
Ordered Lists       First chars in line                 ~#
Headings            Equal signs, first chars in line    ~=
Links Open          Anywhere                            ~[[
Inside Links        Within Links                        [[A pipe ~| is used within links]]
Links Close         Anywhere                            ~]]
Line Breaks         Anywhere                            ~\\
Horizontal Line     First chars in line                 ~----
Image Open          Anywhere                            ~{{
Image Close         Anywhere                            ~}}
Table Open          First chars in line                 ~| this is | not a table
Inside Tables       Pipe used within a table cell       | x~|y |
Escaping Escape     Anywhere                            ~~
Escaping Escape     Anywhere                            ~<space>
Nowiki Open         First chars in line                 ~{{{
Nowiki Close        First chars in line                 ~}}}

So, for example, this markup:

{{{
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
 if argc>0 {
   if argc<=1 {
     --argc;
~}}}
}}}

will produce this result:

<pre>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
 if argc>0 {
   if argc<=1 {
     --argc;
}}}
</pre>

Superscript#

For those wiki engines which wish to support superscript, we recommend the following syntax.

 This is ^^superscripted^^ text. 

Recommended XHTML: This is ^{superscripted} text.

Output: This is superscripted text.

Comparison: http://www.wikimatrix.org/syntax.php?i=28

Subscript#

For those wiki engines which wish to support subscript, we recommend the following syntax. (We need to discuss which is better.)

 This is ~~subscripted~~ text. 

 This is ,,subscripted,, text. 

Recommended XHTML: This is _subscripted text.

This is subscripted text.

Comparison on wikimatrix: http://www.wikimatrix.org/syntax.php?i=29

Underline#

For those wiki engines which wish to support underlining, we recommend the following syntax.

 This is __underlined__ text. 

Recommended XHTML: This is <u>underlined</u> text.

Output: This is underlined text.

Alternate Link Syntax#

Spaces before and after the arrow are not required. If there are multiple ->, then a link cannot have a ->, so that gets passed to the description.

[[description -> link]]
[[the -> can be used to make a link -> TextFormattingRules]]

Recommended XHTML:

<a href="http://www.examplewiki.com/link">description</a>
<a href="http://www.examplewiki.com/TextFormattingRules">the -> can be used to make a link</a>

Sample output:

description
the characters -> can be used to make a link