TextBasics

parent nodes: SyntaxEscape | TextFormatting | TextLists

Text Basics

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General

WikidPad supports a number of facilities for textformatting. This page explores the basic functions, other pages within TextFormatting explore specific subjects. Formatted text is for the larger part only visible as such in Preview and Html.

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Subjects

Character formatting

Wikidpad's support for character formatting is limited to the font styles bold and italic [1][2].

To make text bold, enclose it in asterisks, like *bold* giving bold.
To make it italic, enclose it in underscores, like _italic_ giving italic.

These two font styles are mutually exclusive in Wikidpad; text can not be defined to be both bold ánd italic [3]. When tried, it either results in: _bold & italic_ or in: *bold & italic*. If bold+italic text or other additional character formatting is realy needed, then the use of html elements could be considered; see html formatting.

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[1] Font style tags act as a special kind of escape character; nothing inbetween is recognised as a link, attribute or other wikidpad element anymore.
[2] Wikidpad has no support for underlined text; underlined text has been deprecated by the W3 Committee, so it is not considered a valid part of html anymore.
[3] Version 2.0 or later possibly wíll have support for this.

Headings

The plus sign can be used to define headings for (sub)sections on the page, like this: "+Heading 1" [5]. The level of the heading and it formatting can be specified with the number of plus signs in front of it. For examples on how to use them, see the headings on this and other pages of the wiki [6].

Wikidpad implements headings as - encloses them in - named html anchors. In combination with the [:toc:] function this allows to insert a table of contents anywhere on a page and from there to jump straight to a particular section. See the Toc on top of this page and try it [7].

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[5] Like the font style tags, the heading tag acts as a special kind of escape character; nothing after the plus sign is recognised as a link, attribute or other wikidpad element anymore.
[6] The Wikidpad editor - as from version 1.9 - supports folding of sections based on their headings
[7] Wikidpad - as from version 1.9 - supports toc formatting up to heading level 13.

Indentation

Wikidpad supports line indentation; to indent a line, start it with one or more tab characters [9]. The next line will automatically also be indented; this behaviour can be switched on or of with the option: "Menu / Editor / Settings / Auto-indent".

The indentation of two or more (already indented!) consecutive lines can be increased by selecting them and pressing Tab. To reduce indentation, press Shift+Tab instead.

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[9] Wikidpad implements indented lines as an html "list" element, enclosing them in <ul> tags. This should be taken into account, when using indentation in inline html block elements like tables in Wikidpad.

Horizontal lines

Four (4) consecutive hyphens (-) will create a horizontal line, like can be seen on this page [12]. Oddly enough this does not only happen when the hyphens are the only characters in the line, but also when they are in the middle of a text. That text will then effectively be broken into two part, like this "aa ---- bb" becomming:

In order to prevent this from happening, the escape character can be used: "aaa \---- bb" [13]. A line can be indented, like is the case above with " aa ---- bb". Wikidpad then encloses it in <ul> tags.

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[12] Effectively móre then 4 hyphens produce the same result; a horizontal line is created and any excess hyphens are ignored.
[13] Be aware that the backslash only escapes óne hyphen a time; if there are five or more consecutive hyphens, then óne preceding backslash will stil result in a horizontal line!

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