List of wiki engines taken from [Wiki Popularity].  Also see [Tables].

!!! Rows versus Columns
I think there are two ways, column and row orientation. Most wikis are row oriented. For some tasks rows are better, for some tasks columns are better. I'm astonished that not more wikis implement column based tables (perhaps because HTML, LaTeX are row oriented).

{{{
>> Header1
> column1, row1
> column1, row2
> column1, row3
>> Header2
> column2, row1
> column2, row2
> column2, row3
}}}

This is easy to cut and paste, doesn't interfere with long lines, line breaks or markup. It's easy to add rows and easy to add columns. Hard thing is to find the right row when there are lots of rows and few columns (row orientation might be better then). Harder to implement than row orientation, because HTML is row
oriented. Multi row is easy

{{{
>,> rowspan 2
}}}

but column span is more difficult. Could be done with an empty line


-StephanSchmidt

!!!Most Popular Open Source Wiki Engines

!![MediaWiki]

Complicated: [MediaWiki table syntax|http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table]

!![Twiki]
{{{
| *L* | *C* | *R* |
| A2 |  2  |  2 |
| A3 |  3  |  3 |
| multi span |||
| A4-6 | four | four |
|^| five | five |
|^| six | six |
}}}

!![TikiWiki]

!| as delimiter (default)

{{{     
||row1-column1|row1-column2||row2-column1|row2-column2|| 
}}}

!Newline as delimiter

{{{
||row1-column1|row1-column2
row2-column1|row2-column2|| 
}}}

!![PukiWiki]
!![MoinMoin]

!Simple tables:
{{{
||'''A'''||'''B'''||'''C'''||
||1      ||2      ||3      ||
}}}
[Complicated MoinMoin tables|http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/SyntaxReference]

!![PmWiki]
!Simplest table:
{{{
|| border=1
|| cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 ||
|| cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 |
}}}

[More advanced tables|http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Tables]

[Table directives, that helps to format tables in PmWiki|http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/TableDirectives]

!![DokuWiki]
{{{
^Hading 1  ^ Heading 2 ^
|Cell 1.1  | 1.2 |
|Cell 2.1  | 2.2 |
}}}
 [DokuWiki table syntax|http://www.wikimatrix.org/wiki/dokuwiki:tables]

!![PhpWiki]
!![MoniWiki]
!![TiddlyWiki]
!![JSPWiki]
[JSPWiki table syntax|http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/HowToCreateATable]
{{{
|__Heading 1__|__Heading 2__
|Cell 1.1|1.2
|Cell 2.1|2.2
}}}
!![SnipSnap]
!![WackoWiki]
!![Xwiki]
!![UseMod]
!![Oddmuse]
!Simple tables:
{{{
||'''A'''||'''B'''||'''C'''||
||1      ||2      ||3      ||
}}}

Whitespace controls alignment (left, center, right).
Empty cells are fused.

!Complex tables:

{{{
<table pos/r, country/l, oda/r>
pos=Rank
country=Country
oda=%GNP
pos=1
country=Norway
oda=0.92
pos=2
country=Denmark
oda=0.84
pos=3
country=Netherlands
oda=0.81
pos/c=...
pos=9
country=Switzerland
oda=0.38
pos/c=...
pos=22
country=United States
oda/mark/r=0.14
----
}}}

Result:

http://www.oddmuse.org:8888/oddmuse/download/Long_Table_Markup_Extension_Screenshot

Columns are labelled, cells are created by assigning to labels. Cells can contain multiple paragraphs, lists, etc. CSS classes can be added per table, per column, or per cell. Missing cells are fused with neighbours.

!![Midgard Wiki]
!![FlexWiki]
!![Instiki]
!![Zwiki]
!![TracWiki]

!!!Most Popular Commercial Wiki Engines

!![Confluence]
!![PBwiki]
!![Socialtext]
!![Wikispaces]
!![StikiPad]

!!Other Wiki Engines
!![WikkaWiki]
[WikkaWiki table syntax|http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Talk.Tables#section-Talk.Tables-WikkaMarkupForAccessibleTables]: