wiki:syntax

Formatting Syntax

DokuWiki supports some simple markup language, which tries to make the datafiles to be as readable as possible. This page contains all possible syntax you may use when editing the pages. Simply have a look at the source of this page by pressing the Edit this page button at the top or bottom of the page. If you want to try something, just use the playground page. The simpler markup is easily accessible via quickbuttons, too.

DokuWiki supports bold, italic, underlined and monospaced texts. Of course you can combine all these.

DokuWiki supports **bold**, //italic//, __underlined__ and ''monospaced'' texts.
Of course you can **__//''combine''//__** all these.

You can use subscript and superscript, too.

You can use <sub>subscript</sub> and <sup>superscript</sup>, too.

You can mark something as deleted as well.

You can mark something as <del>deleted</del> as well.

Paragraphs are created from blank lines. If you want to force a newline without a paragraph, you can use two backslashes followed by a whitespace or the end of line.

This is some text with some linebreaks
Note that the two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line
or followed by
a whitespace \\this happens without it.

This is some text with some linebreaks\\ Note that the
two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line\\
or followed by\\ a whitespace \\this happens without it.

You should use forced newlines only if really needed.

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links.

External links are recognized automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set Linknames, too: This Link points to google. Email addresses like this one: andi@splitbrain.org are recognized, too.

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links. External links are recognized
automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set
Linknames, too: [[http://www.google.com|This Link points to google]]. Email
addresses like this one: <andi@splitbrain.org> are recognized, too.

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give a wiki:pagename or use an additional Title Text. Wiki pagenames are converted to lowercase automatically, special characters are not allowed.

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give
a [[pagename]] or use an additional [[pagename|Title Text]]. Wiki pagenames
are converted to lowercase automatically, special chars are not allowed.

You can use namespaces by using a colon in the pagename.

You can use [[wiki:namespaces]] by using a colon in the pagename.

For details about namespaces see wiki:namespaces.

Linking to a specific section is possible, too. Just add the section name behind a hash character as known from HTML. This links to this Section.

This links to [[syntax#internal|this Section]].

Notes:

  • Links to existing pages are shown in a different style from nonexisting ones.
  • DokuWiki does not use CamelCase to automatically create links by default, but this behaviour can be enabled in the wiki:config file. Hint: If DokuWiki is a link, then it's enabled.
  • When a section's heading is changed, its bookmark changes, too. So don't rely on section linking too much.

DokuWiki supports Interwiki links. These are quick links to other Wikis. For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: Wiki.

DokuWiki supports [[doku>wiki:interwiki|Interwiki]] links. These are quick links to other Wikis.
For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: [[wp>Wiki]].

Windows shares like this are recognized, too. Please note that these only make sense in a homogenous user group like a corporate Intranet.

Windows Shares like [[\\server\share|this]] are recognized, too.

Notes:

  • For security reasons direct browsing of windows shares only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer per default (and only in the „local zone“).
  • For Mozilla and Firefox it can be enabled through the config option security.checkloaduri but this is not recommended.
  • See 151 for more info.

You can also use an image to link to another internal or external page by combining the syntax for links and images (see below) like this:

[[http://www.php.net|{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}]]

Please note: The image formatting is the only formatting syntax accepted in link names.

The whole image and link syntax is supported (including image resizing, internal and external images and URLs and interwiki links).

You can add footnotes 1) by using double parentheses.

You can add footnotes ((This is a footnote)) by using double parentheses.

You can use up to five different levels of headlines to structure your content. If you have more than three headlines, a table of contents is generated automatically – this can be disabled by including the string ~~NOTOC~~ in the document.

Headline Level 4

Headline Level 5
==== Headline Level 3 ====
=== Headline Level 4 ===
== Headline Level 5 ==

By using four or more dashes, you can make a horizontal line:


You can include external and internal wiki:images with curly brackets. Optionally you can specify the size of them.

Real size:

Resize to given width:

Resize to given width and height:

Resized external image:

Real size:                        {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
Resize to given width:            {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?50}}
Resize to given width and height: {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?200x50}}
Resized external image:           {{http://de3.php.net/images/php.gif?200x50}}

By using left or right whitespaces you can choose the alignment.

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}
{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}

Of course, you can add a title (displayed as a tooltip by most browsers), too.

This is the caption

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png |This is the caption}}

If you specify a filename (external or internal) that is not an image (gif, jpeg, png), then it will be displayed as a link instead.

For linking an image to another page see Image Links above.

Dokuwiki supports ordered and unordered lists. To create a list item, indent your text by two spaces and use a * for unordered lists or a - for ordered ones.

  • This is a list
  • The second item
    • You may have different levels
  • Another item
  1. The same list but ordered
  2. Another item
    1. Just use indention for deeper levels
  3. That's it
  * This is a list
  * The second item
    * You may have different levels
  * Another item

  - The same list but ordered
  - Another item
    - Just use indention for deeper levels
  - That's it

DokuWiki converts commonly used emoticons to their graphical equivalents. More smileys can be placed in the smiley directory and configured in the conf/smileys.conf file. Here is an overview of Smileys included in DokuWiki.

  • 8-) 8-)
  • 8-O 8-O
  • :-( :-(
  • :-) :-)
  • =) =)
  • :-/ :-/
  • :-\ :-\
  • :-? :-?
  • :-D :-D
  • :-P :-P
  • :-O :-O
  • :-X :-X
  • :-| :-|
  • ;-) ;-)
  • ^_^ ^_^
  • :?: :?:
  • :!: :!:
  • LOL LOL
  • FIXME FIXME
  • DELETEME DELETEME

DokuWiki can convert simple text characters to their typographically correct entities. Here is an example of recognized characters.

→ ← ↔ ⇒ ⇐ ⇔ » « – — 640×480 © ™ ® „He thought 'It's a man's world'…“

-> <- <-> => <= <=> >> << -- --- 640x480 (c) (tm) (r)
"He thought 'It's a man's world'..."

Please note: These conversions can be turned off through a config option and a pattern file.

Some times you want to mark some text to show it's a reply or comment. You can use the following syntax:

I think we should do it

> No we shouldn't

>> Well, I say we should

> Really?

>> Yes!

>>> Then lets do it!

I think we should do it

No we shouldn't
Well, I say we should
Really?
Yes!
Then lets do it!

DokuWiki supports a simple syntax to create tables.

Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3
Row 1 Col 1 Row 1 Col 2 Row 1 Col 3
Row 2 Col 1 some colspan (note the double pipe)
Row 3 Col 1 Row 2 Col 2 Row 2 Col 3

Table rows have to start and end with a | for normal rows or a ^ for headers.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2       ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | Row 1 Col 2     | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | some colspan (note the double pipe) ||
| Row 3 Col 1    | Row 2 Col 2     | Row 2 Col 3        |

To connect cells horizontally, just make the next cell completely empty as shown above. Be sure to have always the same amount of cell separators!

Vertical tableheaders are possible, too.

Heading 1 Heading 2
Heading 3 Row 1 Col 2 Row 1 Col 3
Heading 4 no colspan this time
Heading 5 Row 2 Col 2 Row 2 Col 3

As you can see, it's the cell separator before a cell which decides about the formatting:

|              ^ Heading 1            ^ Heading 2          ^
^ Heading 3    | Row 1 Col 2          | Row 1 Col 3        |
^ Heading 4    | no colspan this time |                    |
^ Heading 5    | Row 2 Col 2          | Row 2 Col 3        |

Note: Vertical spans (rowspan) are not possible.

You can align the table contents, too. Just add at least two whitespaces at the opposite end of your text: Add two spaces on the left to align right, two spaces on the right to align left and two spaces at least at both ends for centered text.

Table with alignment
right center left
left right center
xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx

This is how it looks in the source:

^           Table with alignment           ^^^
|         right|    center    |left          |
|left          |         right|    center    |
| xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx |

You can include non-parsed blocks into your documents by either indenting them by at least two spaces (like used for the previous examples) or by using the tags code or file.

This is preformatted code all spaces are preserved: like              <-this
This is pretty much the same, but you could use it to show that you quoted a file.  

To let the parser ignore an area completely (ie. do no formatting on it), enclose the area either with nowiki tags or even simpler, with double percent signs %%.

This is some text which contains addresses like this: http://www.splitbrain.org and **formatting**, but nothing is done with it.

See the source of this page to see how to use these blocks.

DokuWiki can highlight sourcecode, which makes it easier to read. It uses the GeSHi Generic Syntax Highlighter – so any language supported by GeSHi is supported. The syntax is the same like in the code block in the previous section, but this time the name of the used language is inserted inside the tag. Eg. <code java>.

/** 
 * The HelloWorldApp class implements an application that
 * simply displays "Hello World!" to the standard output.
 */
class HelloWorldApp {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); //Display the string.
    }
}

The following language strings are currently recognized: abap actionscript-french, actionscript, ada, apache, applescript, asm, asp, autoit, bash, basic4gl, blitzbasic, bnf, caddcl, cadlisp, cfdg, cfm, c_mac, c, cpp, cpp-qt, csharp, css, delphi, diff, div, dos, dot, d, eiffel, fortran, freebasic, genero, gml, groovy, haskell, html, idl, ini, inno, io, java5, java, javascript, latex, lisp, lua, m68k, matlab, mirc, mpasm, mysql, nsis, objc, ocaml-brief, ocaml, oobas, oracle8, pascal, perl, per, php-brief, php, plsql, python, qbasic, rails, reg, robots, ruby, sas, scheme, sdlbasic, smalltalk, smarty, sql, tcl, text, thinbasic, tsql, vbnet, vb, vhdl, visualfoxpro, winbatch, xml, xpp, z80

DokuWiki can integrate data from external XML feeds. For parsing the XML feeds, SimplePie is used. All formats understood by SimplePie can be used in DokuWiki as well. You can influence the rendering by multiple additional space separated parameters:

Parameter Description
any number will be used as maximum number items to show, defaults to 8
reverse display the last items in the feed first
author show item authors names
date show item dates
description show the item description. If HTML is disabled all tags will be stripped
n[dhm] refresh period, where d=days, h=hours, m=minutes. (e.g. 12h = 12 hours).

The refresh period defaults to 4 hours. Any value below 10 minutes will be treated as 10 minutes. DokuWiki will generally try to supply a cached version of a page, obviously this is inappropriate when the page contains dynamic external content. The parameter tells DokuWiki to re-render the page if it is more than refresh period since the page was last rendered.

Example:

{{rss>http://slashdot.org/index.rss 5 author date 1h }}

You can embed raw HTML or PHP code into your documents by using the html or php tags like this:

<html>
This is some <span style="color:red;font-size:150%;">inline HTML</span>
</html>
<HTML>
<p style="border:2px dashed red;">And this is some block HTML</p>
</HTML>

<html> This is some <span style=„color:red;font-size:150%;“>inline HTML</span> </html> <HTML> <p style=„border:2px dashed red;“>And this is some block HTML</p> </HTML>

<php>
echo 'A logo generated by PHP:';
echo '<img src="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '" alt="PHP Logo !" />';
echo '(generated inline HTML)';
</php>
<PHP>
echo '<table class="inline"><tr><td>The same, but inside a block level element:</td>';
echo '<td><img src="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '" alt="PHP Logo !" /></td>';
echo '</tr></table>';
</PHP>

<php> echo 'A logo generated by PHP:'; echo '<img src=„' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '“ alt=„PHP Logo !“ />'; echo '(inline HTML)'; </php> <PHP> echo '<table class=„inline“><tr><td>The same, but inside a block level element:</td>'; echo '<td><img src=„' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '“ alt=„PHP Logo !“ /></td>'; echo '</tr></table>'; </PHP>

Please Note: HTML and PHP embedding is disabled by default in the configuration. If disabled, the code is displayed instead of executed.

Some syntax influences how DokuWiki renders a page without creating any output it self. The following control macros are availble:

Macro Description
~~NOTOC~~ If this macro is found on the page, no table of contents will be created
~~NOCACHE~~ DokuWiki caches all output by default. Sometimes this might not be wanted (eg. when the <php> syntax above is used), adding this macro will force DokuWiki to rerender a page on every call

DokuWiki's syntax can be extended by Plugins. How the installed plugins are used is described on their appropriate description pages. The following syntax plugins are available in this particular DokuWiki installation:

  • Box Plugin 2022-08-16 von Christopher Smith
    Boxes with titles, colour and rounded corners. Syntax: <box width class colours|title> ... </box|caption> width, class, colours title & caption are optional. The title can include some wiki markup, the box contents can include almost any wiki markup.
  • Dw2Pdf plugin 2023-11-25 von Andreas Gohr and Luigi Micco
    DokuWiki to PDF converter
  • Info Plugin 2020-06-04 von Andreas Gohr
    Displays information about various DokuWiki internals

1)
This is a footnote