Wiki formatting is very simple and is based on text with extra little annotations. From plain text you get nice formatting. It's a little bit like the emoticons in instant messenger 
Note that almost all of these rules are available as hover-tips on the side of the page when you're editing a topic.
Basic Formatting
Simple Text Formatting
Two ticks (' ') for italics
Three ticks (' ' ') for bold
Bang (!) at the start of a line for H1
Bang Bang (!!) at the start of a line for H2
etc. (!!!, !!!!, ...)
Links
Any PascalCased word becomes a link.
Surrounding a word with square brackets word will let you do non-[pascalcased] words. Generally this is considered "odd", so you should try to use PascalCased words where possible.
Any URL becomes a link (http://www.msn.com).
You can also make arbitrary links using the Textism formatting below.
Lines
Four dashes (- - - -) at the begining of a line give you an HR
Lists
Starting a line with a tab (or 8 spaces) followed by a star:
- item 1
- sub item 1
- sub item 1
- item 2
Ordered lists, a line with a tab (or 8 spaces) followed by a 1.:
- item 1
- sub item 1
- sub item 2
- item 2
NOTE You can't nest ordered and unordered lists for now.
Emoticons
All of usual emoticons work (see Instant Messenger for the full inventory).
Tables
see also TableFormattingInWiki
A line that starts and ends with || is a table row. Cells are divided with ||.
For example:
||Containers||(n)|| ||MIL||(y)|| ||Managed Code||(y)|| ||After work||(d)||
| Containers | |
| MIL | |
| Managed Code | |
| After work | |
Advanced Formatting
Preformatting or Code
Any line starting with whitespace becomes PRE
Public Class MyClass
Public Sub New()
DoCoolStuff()
If IsReallyCool Then
DoSomethingEvenModeCool()
End If
End Sub
End Class
public class CSharpExample {
CSharpExample() {
int n = 5;
object[] test = new object[n];
}
}
Text inside of a PRE block doesn't get hyperlinks automatically added to it.
Images
To put in an image, just link to an external URL that ends in jpeg/gif/jpg:
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/images/sofa-bill.jpg
External Wiki References
To reference a topic on an external wiki (that is a topic from not this website), you add (anywhere before the link)
@siteName=http://myserver/mywiki/default.aspx/$$$
Then, anywhere after that you can use
TopicName@siteName
The casing of "siteName" is arbitrary, there are no restrictions. Also, you can create a topic called ExternalWikis which will be loaded for every topic, allowing for a "header file" of common external wikis.
The $$$ in the definition URL will be replaced with the topic name provided.
Textile formatting
http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/index.html
text: _emphasis_ text: *strong* text: ??citation?? text: -deleted text- text: +inserted text+ text: ^superscript^ text: ~subscript~ text: @code@ text: "this is a link (optional tooltip)":http://www.microsoft.com
Which renders:
- text: emphasis
- text: strong
- text: citation
- text:
deleted text - text: inserted text
- text: superscript
- text: subscript
- text:
code - text: this is a link (optional tooltip)
Delete
To delete any page, just edit the page to contain only the word "delete".
Properties
See also WikiPageProperty and ExamplePropertyPage
Escaping
If you want to prevent TopicNames from being linked, you can use the double-quote escape: surround the text with a pair of double-quotes on each side and you'll prevent the formatter from turning these into links. This also works for much other run-level formatting (e.g., bold, italic, URL linking, etc.). For example, NormallyThisWouldBeLinked and '''this would be bold'''. You get that with:
""NormallyThisWouldBeLinked"" and ""'''this would be bold'''""