Difference between revisions of "Help:Contents"

Revision as of 08:36, 28 December 2007

Introduction

Use simple text-only HTML when editing. For a new paragraph, surround the paragraph with the special paragraph tags. The start paragraph tag is <P> and the end paragraph tag is </P>. An example showing how to format this paragraph looks like this:

<P>
Use simple text-only HTML when editing.  For a new paragraph, surround the paragraph with the special
paragraph tags.  The start paragraph tag is &lt;P&gt; and the end paragraph tag is &lt;/P&gt;. 
An example showing how to format this paragraph looks like this:
</P>

One thing you noticed I'm sure was the some symbols are typed in a strange way. The less than symbol requires you to type &lt; and the greater than symbol requires you to type &gt;. This is because those symbols are used as part of the normal tags. If you really must enter an ampersand, you can type &amp; to get it.

Other HTML tags known to work are the unordered list tags. The tag to start an unordered list is <UL> and the tag to end an unordered list is </UL>. Each item in the list begins with a special tag to mark the start of the item, and that tag is <LI>. There is no tag to end an item in the list. An unordered list looks like this:

• Item one.
• Item two.
• Item three.

What you need to type in the wiki editor to get that is this:

<UL>
<LI>Item <EM>one</EM>.
<LI>Item <B>two</B>.
<LI>Item three.
</UL>

The list had two new techniques; adding emphasis and making something bold. Those are good to use sparingly, but be careful not to use them too often.

If you want to have a list with numbers in front of the items like an outline, you just do the same thing as the unordered list, but you use <OL> as the start tag and </OL> as the end tag. The item tags are still <LI>. Here is an example:

1. Item one.
2. Item two.
3. Item three.

What you need to type in the wiki editor to get that is this:

<OL>
<LI>Item <EM>one</EM>.
<LI>Item <B>two</B>.
<LI>Item three.
</OL>

Paired tags

I think you now see the pattern for these tags. An tag to end a mode is the same as the tag to begin the mode except that a slash character '/' is inserted immediately after the opening '<'. Also, the tags are designed to be easy to remember (if you know English). Paired tags include:

Unpaired Tags

While most tags come in pairs as shown in the previous table, some tags are used without a corresponding end tag. These include:

</TR>

What do the break and horizontal rule tags do? It is best shown by example.

Hi!

The two lines with 'Hi!' between them were produced like this:

<HR>
<P>
Hi!
</P>
<HR>

Break is also another simple but useful unpaired tag. It is used when typing in something where you do not want the text on two lines to be placed all on one line if the browser width is large. It would be used for song lyrics, poetry, and perhaps by people who do not know about <PRE> and </PRE>. Here is an example using &tl;BR>:

Syslinux is nice
It boots my machine
You can't beat the price
If you know what I mean

That limerick would be entered into the wiki like this:

Syslinux is nice<BR>
It boots my machine<BR>
You can't beat the price<BR>
If you know what I mean<BR>

Conclusion

With only the simple tags described on this page you will be able to create useful wiwi pages with simple formatting that will look good in any browser. While it is possible to do more impressive formatting, the truth is people care more about what you say than how it looks when they come to a technical wiwi to try and find some help with their problems. Please spend your time on getting the correct content on the page instead of worrying too much about the formatting. Paragraphs and lists will work for almost everything.