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. E.G., ArcInfo

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 gives 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.:

1. item 1
1. sub item 1
2. sub item 2
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

A line that starts and ends with || is a table row. Cells are divided with ||.

For example:

 ||Containers||(n)||
 ||MIL||(y)||
 ||Managed Code||(b)||
 ||After work||(d)||

Containers
MIL
Managed Code
After work

• See TableFormattingRules for information on advanced table formatting (justification, highlighting, etc.)

Advanced Formatting

Preformatting or Code

Any line starting with whitespace becomes PRE

 Public Class MyClass
    Public Sub New()
        DoCoolStuff()
        If IsReallyCool Then
            DoSomethingEvenMoreCool()
        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

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 most 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'''""

'New One'