all the wikis

Wiki text, wiki syntax or wiki markup are all terms for a language used by many wikis to allow authors to easily create, write, edit and format pages on wiki websites from their web browsers. Wikis are increasingly offering WYSIWYG editing or access to the wiki page’s html but there are advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches.

Markup

Markup is the use of coded annotations on written text to convey additional information. The term originated in the traditional printing industry when copywriters would handwrite codes on their manuscripts to tell typesetters how they wanted particular segments of text formatting. Over time, these annotations became standardised.

Hypertext Markup Language (html)

html and its offspring xhtml are markup languages used to tell a browser how to display the content of web, wiki and blog pages.
For example: the following code uses xhtml tags to tell browsers the text it accompanies is a bulleted list:

<ul>
<li>wiki markup </li>
<i>html </li>
<li>WYSIWYG </li>
</ul>

The following is the insertion of a link to another page, let’s call it ‘Further Notes’, on a wiki or website.

<a href= “furthernotes”>Further Notes</a>

Heavily tagged code is not easy to for humans to read.

Wiki markup, Wiki text or wiki syntax

When Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki, he wanted multiple authors to easily collaborate on wiki pages. He aimed to develop an editing markup that was easily read and edited by a human author but was easily converted by a wiki server into browser readable html.

The bulleted list from above looks much simpler when you look at the code in the wiki text Ward developed, but it displays the same on the readers screen:

*wiki markup
*html
*WYSIWYG

When writing a link to another page in Ward’s wiki markup you simply write the page title in CamelCase like this:

FurtherNotes

Using CamelCase for links is no longer popular but, in general, wiki markup provides an easy means of simple text formatting. However, it is not suitable for laying out web pages; trying to layout anything other than the simplest table in wiki markup becomes very complicated.

Advantages and disadvantages of wiki text

Even when wiki authors are familiar with html, there are still some advantages to using wiki markup on wikis.

Restricting authors to wiki markup:

• Maintains a consistent look and feel to the wiki
• Makes it easier for new authors to join the wiki
• Prevents the insertion of malicious codes, such as by using javascript
• Allows the use of wiki markup to do things that html cannot, for example automatically insert footnotes, as in wikipedia

The ability to insert footnotes is not universal in all versions of wiki markup, this highlights one of the major difficulties with wiki markup. There is no universally accepted version that can be used on all wikis. Skills learned on one wiki, cannot necessarily be transferred to another.

Although wiki markup is designed for ease of use and is easy to learn, it does provide a barrier to non-technical users. To reduce this barrier many wikis, have editing toolbars, which allow users to insert appropriate wiki markup using the toolbars. They do not provide a WYSIWYG view of the page but make it easier enter the most frequently used markup codes.

Wikidot is a fairly new wiki that uses wiki markup for editing. It does not seem to have stunted their growth and they have 50,000 free no-ad wikis running on their server. They have a very powerful wiki markup, which is versatile and produces code compliant xhtml. You can try it out at the wikidot sandbox.

Although wiki markup is not difficult, any barrier to participation in a wiki is significant. My personal feeling is that this is the biggest barrier to wiki implementation for the general population.

Why not WYSIWYG?

If html is so hard and wiki markup puts people off, why don’t wikis use WYSIWYG editing?

It is simply because WYSIWYG editors do not produce good html or xhtml. Some of them are not bad though, as long as you are satisfied with what the editor allows you to do and do not switch back and forward between using the editor and editing the raw code.

PBwiki is a wiki with its origins in wiki markup but which now provides a WYSIWYG editor. You can try it out by following the link ‘try a demo wiki’ on the PBwiki front page. I think you will find it easy to use and satisfactory for most of editing needs.

Well that is a brief intro to wiki markup. If you want to give wiki markup a try in the real world, go to wikipedia or wikihow. They are very keen for novices to jump in and edit their pages.

• Social Bookmarking
  
  • Subscribe
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati