Formal Formatting Rules and Conventions

Formatting is applied in the following order:

  1. Source code is parsed and stored for later display. See FormalFormattingRules/SourceCode.
  2. Text enclosed in three backticks (`) is skipped over so that other wiki formatting rules are not applied to it. See FormalFormattingRules/Backticks.
  3. URLs that are enclosed in square brackets are parsed so they will be displayed as follows, with reference numbers increasing throughout the document: [1]. See FormalFormattingRules/Reference.
  4. URLs that are enclosed in square brackets, but have an accompanying description, are parsed so they will be displayed like [this]. See FormalFormattingRules/NamedReference.
  5. URLs that appear bare within a document are formatted as links to the given URL, like this: http://andstuff.org/. Links that end in '.jpg', '.png', or '.gif' are instead displayed as images. See FormalFormattingRules/URL.
  6. In-line macros of the form [[MacroName]] are then parsed. See TaviMacros for more details. (The HTML Anchor macro and the Transclude macro, in particular, can be useful in formatting.)
  7. Free links (links to wiki pages of the form ((free links))) are processed. See free links.
  8. InterWiki links (such as MeatBall:SoftSecurity) are processed. See InterWiki.
  9. WikiWord's are processed into links to the given page. See WordsSmashedTogether. WikiWord's that are preceded by an exclamation mark ('!') aren't turned into links: WikiWord.
  10. Text surrounded in three single quotes is turned into bold:
    '''bold''' => bold
  11. Text surrounded in two single quotes is turned into italic:
    ''italic'' => italic
    '''''bold-italic''''' => bold-italic
  12. Text surrounded by two curly brackets is turned into teletype:
    this is {{teletype}} text => this is teletype text
  13. Lines surrounded by equal signs are turned into headings. See FormalFormattingRules/Headings.
  14. Lines enclosed in pairs of vertical bars (|) are turned into tables. See FormalFormattingRules/Tables.
  15. Four hyphens in a row: ---- form a horizontal bar, like <HR> in HTML
  16. Lines beginning with ':', '#', '*', and ';' are turned into various sorts of lists and indents. See FormalFormattingRules/Lists.
  17. Lastly, line breaks are turned into HTML <br /> elements, to insert a line break in the displayed document.