Wiki Editing Conventions

Zwiki uses a format called reStructured Text. It is simpler than HTML, and assumes most of the text is simply to be formatted into paragraphs. Simple, but not completely general, conventions are used for fonts, wiki links, and external links (URLs?). Simple formatting is used for paragraphs, titles, and sections. The goal is to make it easy to do most common things.

Fonts and links

Text uses the standard font. Enclosing a word or phrase between asterisks *like this* makes it italics like this. Enclosing a word or phrase between double asterisks 'like this' makes it bold like this. Italics can span lines, but the first asterisk must be followed by a non-space, and the last must be preceded by a non-space.

The following:

*asterisks for italics*,
**double asterisks for bold**.

produces asterisks for italics, double asterisks for bold.

Enclosing a word or phrase in square brackets specifies a wiki link to another wiki page. When the page is being viewed (rather than edited), clicking on the link will take you to that page. You can create a wiki link to a page before the target page exists. If the page containing the link is viewed before the target page is created, a question mark '?' is displayed after the link. Clicking on the question mark will create the page and allow you to edit it.

A wiki link looks like this while editing the page [Editing Conventions].
The target page might not exist yet [Do not create this page].

A wiki link looks like this while viewing the page Editing Conventions. A wiki link looks like this if the page does not yet exist [Do not create this page]?.

Paragraphs and sections

Consecutive lines that start all the way to the left are filled and wrapped until a blank line is encountered. The blank line ends the paragraph.

----

is a horizontal line.

In subsequent examples, the source text in the box is followed by what it looks like. The examples are separated by horizontal lines.

Lines are
run together and wrapped into paragraphs. 
The process continues unless they are separated by blank lines.

A blank line splits text into another paragraph.

Lines are run together and wrapped into paragraphs. The process continues unless they are separated by blank lines.

A blank line splits text into another paragraph.

The title and subtitles are indicated by a line of text with a line of formatting characters above and below.

====
Page title or subtitle
====

becomes

Page title or subtitle

The page title is used once at the top of the page. The same formatting later in the page is a subtitle. The title is formatted as <h1>, the subtitles as <h2>

Section headings are indicated by lines of text followed by lines containing format characters. Four or more of the characters are needed. The headings form a hierarchy using the HTML tags <h3> to <h5>, with the style sheets defined by Plone and Zwiki.

The reStructured text processor checks that you are consistent in the levels, and doesn't allow you to skip levels. The following are the recommended levels.

Sections headings are created by a line of text followed by a line of four formatting characters. There are three levels of section headings, using equals ====, minus ----, and tilde ~~~~.

Section Heading
----

becomes

Subsection Heading
====

Subsubsection Heading
~~~~