Help:Wiki Editing

Part of the refactoring of Help:Editing; main page is User:Lord Farin/Sandbox/Help:Editing

Wiki Editing
The definitive reference on wiki editing is of course MediaWiki's own site, in particular the MediaWiki Help Pages.

The below gives an overview of the wiki functionality that is most frequently used on ProofWiki.

Bold, italic and more text styles
Text you would like to be bold should be enclosed in three single quotes. For example:

Bold text

creates: Bold text.

Italic font is produced with two single quotes, for example:

Italic text

creates: Italic text

To produce bold, italicised writing, use five consecutive single quotes:

Bold and italic text

creates: Bold and italic text.

Fixed width text:

creates:

Note that while:

 Fixed width text 

produces the same result, the  tag is known to be badly behaved in combination with MediaWiki, creating rendering issues.

Therefore, the  tag is to be used universally on ProofWiki to generate fixed with text.

Line breaking
Breaking a line in the editor does not break a line in the displayed text. For example:

I will continue this on the next line

displays as:

I will continue this on the next line.

To break a line, space the text with a single blank line:

I will continue this

on the next line

Sections and subsections
A section heading is produced by enclosing the desired title between two equals signs. For example:

== Definition ==

will produce a section entitled "Definition".

A subsection should be enclosed between three equals signs, for example:

=== Subsection ===

will produce a subsection within the section that it is located.

One can continue making sub-subsections etc. with four or more equals signs.

As a general rule on spacing, each section or subsection should be preceded by two blank lines and followed by a single blank line.

Each sentence should appear on a separate line, with a single blank line above and below.

Indenting and bullet points
To indent a sentence or equation, add a colon at the start of the line. For example:



will produce:


 * Indented material

For a larger indent use two or more colons.

For example, it is required by house style that each displayed equation be preceded with a single colon.

To produce a list of bullet points, write each point on a line beginning with an asterisk. For example:

* Bullet point 1

* Bullet point 2

produces:


 * Bullet point 1


 * Bullet point 2

Link to internal page
To link to another page on ProofWiki, you must enclose the page name in double square brackets.

For example, to link to Pythagoras's Theorem, you would type:

Pythagoras's Theorem

To change the text to say something different and still link to that page you need to use a |.

For example to link here you would type:

here

To link to a particular section on a page, append a # to the page name followed by the subsection.

For example, to link here you would type:

here

As a general rule each if you are using a mathematical definition or result, you should link to the relevant page at least for the first occurrence on the page.

Subsequent uses of the same page may of course be linked; there is no need to link the same page five or ten times in the same article, but it does no harm. In particular, when referencing the same page in a slightly different context, it is a good idea to provide another link to that same page.

Redirecting a page
If a theorem or definition is commonly known by more than one name, rather than create two separate pages just one page should be created, and the second redirected to the first.

This should be done with the command:

#Redirect Page Name

For example, to redirect a page to Pythagoras's Theorem enter:

#Redirect Pythagoras's Theorem

Remember to add categories to the redirected page as appropriate.

Link to external page
Linking to an external page is almost the same as linking to an internal page.

You need to enclose the page name in 's.

To add text the link, you just have to add what you want to name the link inside the brackets.

For example:

Google

would create a link that looked like this: Google