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Meta > Editing

Sign up to these forums to be able to log into this wiki Read the official MediaWiki editing guide IMPORTANT: Test your editing in our sandbox Help with documentation

Discussion

Discuss something on its discussion page.

Sign your comments on talk pages with ~~~~ as it makes tracking conversations so much easier. =)

TIP: If you are using FireFox when editing, you should see clickable icons above the Edit Window. The second icon from the right hand end will insert your signature with time stamp.

NOTES:

• The only pages that should be signed are the Sandbox page and Talk pages (i.e., Discussion pages).

• It is not appropriate to include on main Wiki pages comments like " Have a great day! :) " As this is a Wiki, and not a post in a PCLinuxOS Forum, common sense should prevail.

• Please remember to check your Talk page (YourUserName:Talk) for comments from others.

• Also, please check the Recent changes in left menu (when not logged in) or at top and bottom (when logged in).

• When editing any page, please be sure to add a brief comment in the Summary section at the bottom.
  • If there is already something like /* Discussion */ in the Summary, then add your comment after it.
  • Also if you have done a Minor Edit to an existing page, tick the box. It will then get indicated as an m. This helps the Wiki admin, and all others who may be working on this Wiki, to know what has been done.
  • The brief comments you put in the Summary section are shown on the Recent changes page.

• Each Wiki page also has its own Talk (discuss) page as well. These are used for questions, comments and suggestions between Wiki contributors about that page, with out these comments having to go on to the main pages of the WiKi. This can be very useful some times !

General

• Try to adhere to these recommended wiki philosophies
• See Multi-language tests

A lot of HTML code will work as-is:

<u>underline</u> <i>italics</i> <em>emphasis</em> <b>bold</b> <big>big</big> <s>strikethrough</s> ^superscript _subscript <font color="red">red</font>

underline italics emphasis bold big strikethrough ^superscript _subscript red

http://example.com mailto:nobody@example.com

Creating a new page

Editing a page

At the top of every page and at the right of every section is an 'edit' link. Click it to edit the page. You have to be logged in to edit pages.

---

Creating a new link within the Wiki

Add an internal Wiki link by putting two square brackets each side of the page's name. For example, the main page is called 'Main Page' and I can make links to it like this: [[Main Page]] and it will appear like a link: Main Page.

If you need to link to a sub-page, you do it the same way, like [[FAQ/0.94]] which appears like FAQ/0.94

If you want to name your link something different then put '|display this' inside the square brackets, like this: [[Main Page|display this]] and it will appear like this: display this

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Creating a new link external to the Wiki

Add an external Wiki link by putting one square bracket each side of the external URL. For example, the main page of the PClinuxOS site is http://www.pclinuxos.com and I can make a link to it like this [http://www.pclinuxos.com] and it will appear like this: [1] if you click the "1" it will take you there, but it is not very nice or explicit unless you put some sort of description with it like this: Go to PCLinuxos [2] notice it has put a "2' in ? That is because I have put a second external link in on the same page, if I were to put a third external link on this page it would become a "3" ! They are still not very nice and require some explanation text with them each time you put one in. Next is a much better way to do it.

A description of an external link can be included within the square bracket's, eg. [http://www.pclinuxos.com Go to PCLinuxOS] and it will appear like this Go to PCLinuxOS now don't you think that looks much better ? Plus we got rid of those horrible "1 2 3's" !

Some times you may not want to put in a description as such but show the URL so that people know exactly where they are going before they click the link, that is also easy and is done like this [http://www.pclinuxos.com http://www.pclinuxos.com] and the second URL becomes the description. It will look like this: http://www.pclinuxos.com

How far can we go with an external link you may wonder ? Well quite a long way if you want ! Here is just one example: [http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=26&board=4.0 PCLinuxOS Sandbox] which will look like this: PCLinuxOS Sandbox go on click it (or right click and open in new Tab) and see where it goes !

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So to sum up

• For a link to a page within the wiki it has two square brackets each side of the page name (including any description).
• For an URL link that is external to the wiki it has one square bracket each side of the URL (including any description).

---

NOTES

People often ask "But how to I actually create a new page ? because it's not obvious" it is quite simple when you know !

• When Logged in, what ever page you are at in the WiKi, in your web-browsers URL section at the top, you will see http://docs.pclinuxos.com/something - replace the something with the name of the page you want to create, press Enter and then you will be in the very first edit session for that new page.

• It is preferred that the first letter of a page is a Capital letter (it can create problems in the Wiki if you don't)

• If you use more than one word DO NOT put spaces between words, use an underline (_) or a Dash (-) the underline is preferred method.

• You may notice on many pages with a several word name, and that the words are just joined together, this is the easy-er way to create a page with multiple words in the name. And is the way I (johncoom) do it now if I can.

• A good TIP is before you create a page, is to have TWO web-browser TAB's open at the Wiki, so that if you want to put a link to, or look up something on another page, you can navigate to it in the other TAB.

• When editing a page (or creating new page) just below editing area is a Editing help (opens in new window). You can use this to get to the Wiki editing guide as this opens in new window (ie. new browser TAB) it will not effect your editing TAB.

Previewing a page that you are editing

An Edit session is NOT WYSIWYG. You have to preview the page to see what it will look like. There is a link at the bottom of the edit window which shows you. ie. the Show preview button.

Preview your page before saving, to make sure all the links are correct and it looks good.

NOTE:

When we say Preview, you will see some thing that is almost like the final thing one will see when not logged in, but not quite. As there is some code that does not take effect (as in how it is displayed) until you log out and view it as a normal person browsing the Wiki would. Here is just one example.

When in an edit session, if one puts a ; at the start of a line, then all of that line becomes bold.

If you login now and come back to here, you will not see the above line as bold. Log out again and come back again and it is shown as bold. This is due to the way the Wiki works, you will just have to get used to this. There are a few other thing like this as well, you will soon get used to them, although it can be confusing at first. Just make sure that when you Preview that all the links work (right mouse, open in new Tab) etc. and that the information is correct and it all makes sense. You can always fix up the presentation later when you have learn some of the tricks of the Wiki.

PS. The above about using a ; at start of line, is a Tip you can use to make a Bold sub heading for different sections of text, with out using a true Header. Now you know this, I am sure you will be able to spot where it has been used already on this Wiki editing guide page ?

Headers

These will not be shown here in detail, because when one puts in any Headers it also creates the Contents list that one can see at the top of this page. And so would completely mess up this "Wiki Editing Guide" page ! Following are brief examples of the Wiki code to use with out them being proper Headers.

= A top level Header =

== A second level Header ==

=== A third level Header ===

Here it is not shown how each level Header relates to another, (so as not to mess up this pages Content List) so please see the separate Headers page that will help you understand how they work, as well as how to create and use Headers in this Wiki.

Text

The first line And the second line are merged together.

If you want your text to appear in a gray box with fixed font width either prepend a blank space to the beginning of the line or place your text between <pre></pre> tags.

#!/bin/bash

#just a code test
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
	    . /etc/bashrc
fi

#!/bin/bash

#just a code test
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
	    . /etc/bashrc
fi

#!/bin/bash

#just a code test
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
	    . /etc/bashrc
fi

<source lang=bash>
#!/bin/bash

#just a code test
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
	    . /etc/bashrc
fi
</source>

 
#!/bin/bash
 
#just a code test
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
	    . /etc/bashrc
fi
 

Lists

* A list
* item two
* item three

# A numbered list
# item two
# item three

* A list
** a second list
* item two
* item three

# A numbered list
## a second list
# item two
# item three

* A list
*# with a numbered list inside
*# like this
* item two
* item three

Images

uploading images

Did you know you can upload the images yourself?

1. Gather the files on your hard disk
2. Prepare the links in the wiki page

Create links like Image:Filename.jpg like this [[Image:filename.jpg]] and then when you save your page you can follow these links and you will be asked to upload the file.

Or this can be done the other way round. (Notice the Upload file, in left menu)

You can upload the images first and then make the wiki page that they will be used on, creating the links to the images as you go along (as shown above), and then using the Show preview button to see what they will look like. Sometimes the image that you have uploaded may be far too big and you may want to make it smaller and re-upload the image.

NOTE: You can specify the width and height that the wiki will display each image, as shown in the following section. However, this can often be a more complex and laborious way to do it. Sometimes it is far easier to resize the image on your own computer and then re-upload the modified image. (Also, if you physically resize an image to be smaller and re-upload, it saves a little space on the server housing the Wiki.)

An image can be positioned on a page by using the following: [[Image:filename.png|center]] or depending where you want to put it: [[Image:filename.png|left]] or even [[Image:filename.png|right]] The "center" is likely to be the most common one that you will ever need to use. Just be careful when using the "left" and "right" that things end up how you want them: allow for the movement of Text that will occur when using left and right. This is another reason why the Show preview is so useful to use all the time!

using images: examples

   

{{Click || image=Mp help.png | link=Help | width=30px | height=30px }} A direct link!

thumbnail text

	text	Sandbox	a little image
Lots of text which would wrap down to another line...

Tables

Note: standard style stuff is available with tables.

• border customization
• background colours
• etc...

A simple table

{|
|-
| one
| two
|-
| three
| four
|}

A complex table

HTML is:

<table border=1 cellspacing=1 cellpadding=3 style="border-collapse:collapse">
<tr><td colspan=2>1</td><td>2</td><td rowspan=2>3</td><td>4</td><td rowspan=5>5</td></tr>
<tr><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td></tr>
<tr><td>10</td><td colspan=2 rowspan=2>11</td><td colspan=2>12</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan=2>13</td><td>14</td><td>15</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan=3>16</td><td>17</td></tr>
</table>

in MediaWiki code it is:

{| border=1 cellspacing=1 cellpadding=3 style="border-collapse:collapse"
|-
|colspan=2 | 1 || 2 
|rowspan=2 | 3 || 4
|rowspan=5 | 5
|-
| 6 || 7 || 8 || 9
|-
| 10 
|colspan=2 rowspan=2 | 11
|colspan=2 | 12
|-
|rowspan=2 | 13 || 14 || 15
|-
|colspan=3 | 16 || 17
|}

Cool features which are missing

Some of these can be added if there's enough of a need.

• Done Automatic text colouring (for scripts, etc) - this is done by a MediaWiki extension that we'd have to install.
• Private pages - it's available in a rudimentary way, but the MediaWiki team is violently opposed to making this feature in a complete way.

todo

• we need documentation re. leading by example, being bold, assuming good faith, etc.
• rules

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