This writing guide is a 'mini-guide for dummies' with a rolistic hue, ie, made for an encyclopedia written for and by the [#User|toons]]" (more than by their "anima" hiding behind their Karavan interface module by strumming on a shell of arma). This guide focuses more on the "art" than the way to make an article while quickly giving the basic essentials to take control of these fab MediaWiki.
Contents
to start
I would like to write something. What a good idea! But it may have already been written, so the wisest thing is to find out if someone has come before you. And there, oh! nice! either the wiki tells you that the article exists or it shows you:
Search result
...
There were no results matching the query.
Create the page « Trucobolite » on this wiki !
If you hover over the text written in dark red (not here, because I have intentionally not added any link) you will see the name of the page highlight and display "Trucobolite (page does not exist)". All you have to do is click to open a blank page and start the adventure.
It's so simple? Um, almost. Just before you start, follow these tips for choosing a title:
- Avoid as much as possible articles, plural... be close to a dictionary entry. It is better to write an article about Corsairs than about The Corsairs even though in the end it's like the corsairs as a tribe we want to talk about.
- If you feel that the article should be written, but perhaps with a similar spelling, you can use the Google search engine by typing the statement:
trucobolite site:http://en.wiki.ryzom.com
And if the page I wanted already exists? Ah! that's another adventure. Later! Now the question is:
Breaking the blank page
To write in a wiki, the easiest way is to write, write, write ...
And so you start ...
After hundreds of characters entered briskly on your keyboard you will take a look at your work, and as everyone advised you you choose the Preview button instead of Save. And, oh, surprise! your text is an inelegant pile of endless words.
As long as you're not used to MediaWiki, you may get some surprising results in the first place. But with very few rules, it is possible to quickly write a good and beautiful text.
Indeed, MediaWiki was designed at a time when wyziwyg was not commonplace. And yet, it wanted to be easily accessible to non-computer scientists, those who work without a mouse, visually impaired ... It was therefore necessary to work as efficiently as possible (that is to say, tiring as little as possible, specialty both Tryker and computer scientists among others) and so, it was necessary to play on simple gestures like repeating the same key to achieve a certain result. But first of all, let's try to see clearly.
Basic formatting
Paragraph
In MediaWiki, a "carriage return" is not a "return to line" let alone a paragraph break. In the spirit, this wiki is very close to HTML. And in the latter, the return to the line has no meaning other than that of making the lines more readable in the source. So, to make a new paragraph, you need two "carriage return" (or a blank line). Here is an example to illustrate these "carriage returns":
This is an example of
a text written on
3 lines.
And this a a new paragraph.
In case a line begins with a
it gives a very special effect, very useful, but perhaps unexpected in the context.
This will be dsipalyed as
This is an example of a text written on 3 lines.
And this a a new paragraph.
In case a line begins with a space
it gives a very special effect, very useful, but perhaps unexpected in the context.
Titles
Your text is already more readable, but it probably lacks to be organized. For that, you will want to add titles. Here too the technique is simple, just frame the text with "=" as shown in the following examples, taken from this passage:
==Breaking the blank page==
===Basic formatting===
====Titles====
And, will you tell me, there is no =Title level 1= ? No, this one is reserved for the MediaWiki who uses it to make the title of the page.
Comment and wiki tags
A comment is some text, inserted in the wiki code of a page, that we can only see if we modify the wiki page = it remains invisible to the display (or in other words: only those who have the right to edit this page can see it).
<!-- This is an example of an invisible comment -->
The wiki interprets the wiki code that you enter in a page; it is done to automatically perform a number of tasks depending on the context. For example:
- before recording a page, it interprets the code (hence the preview, which gives an idea of the silent work done by the wiki, just before saving these codes.) We understand this aspect, with the comments and the nowiki tag)
- before displaying it (the reading mode via the Page view: it hides the comments, processes the nowiki tag, ... the write mode via the Edit view: it shows the comments...), ...
This help page very often uses the nowiki tag to show wiki code.
What is a tag?
It is a series of characters, used for the structuring of a document and which will be invisible by the final reader. In general (the line break is one of the well-known exceptions) there is an opening tag and a closing tag - HTML follows this logic, and the code wiki has much in common with it.
Typically: '''<a_tag>''' bla bla '''</a_tag>'''
With the nowiki tag, as soon as the wiki recognizes the first tag, instead of working as usual, it changes mode until the closing tag. In the wiki toolbar, open the advanced bar to see its icon (just after the numbered lists)