Text Formatting FAQ

How do I make a separator?

You can make a horizontal separator by writing three or more dashes at the beginning of a line.

How do I create a heading?

You can create six sizes of headings - <h1>...<h6> in HTML - by typing, from the beginning of a line, three dashes (-), from one to six plus signs (+), a space, and your heading text. The FAQ questions on this page are created with: ---+++ Have a question?.

Text enclosed in angle brackets like <filename> is not displayed. How can I show it as it is?

TWiki interprets text as HTML. The '<' and '>' characters are used to define HTML commands. Text contained in angle brackets is interpreted by the browser if it's a valid HTML instruction, or ignored if it isn't - either way, the brackets and its contents are not displayed.

If you want to display angle brackets, enter them as HTML codes instead of typing them in directly:

Some words (like WinAPI?) have an unwanted question mark at the end. How can I prevent that?

A question mark after a word is a link to a topic that doesn't yet exist - click it to create the new page. This is a TWiki feature - typing a MeaningfulTitle? in a comment is an invitation for someone else to add to the topic.

To prevent auto-linking - you may simply want to enter a word like JavaScript (the proper spelling!) - prefix it with the special TWiki HTML tag <nop>:

How can I write fixed font text?

Enclose text in "=" equal signs:

Alternatively you could also use preformatted text, see next question for details.

Text I enter gets wrapped around. How can I keep the formatting as it is?

TWiki interprets text as HTML. It is possible to use preformatted text to workaround this. Use the preformatted HTML tags to keep the new line of text as it is. Do so by enclosing text in either <pre> </pre> or <verbatim> </verbatim> tags: 

This text will keep its format as it is:
<verbatim>
  Unit     Price   Qty  Cost
  -------  ------  ---  ------
  aaa       12.00    3   36.00
</verbatim>

The pre tag is standard HTML; verbatim is a special TWiki tag that also forces text to fixed font mode, and also prevents other tags and TWiki shortcuts from being expanded.

How do I create tables?

There are three possibilities:

  1. Use Wiki rule with "|" vertical bars.
  2. Use HTML tables with <table>, <tr>, <td> tags.
  3. Use preformatted text with <verbatim> tags.

1. Use Wiki rule with "|" vertical bars

2. Use HTML tables with <table>, <tr>, <td> tags

This is a manual process using HTML commands. Here is an example. If you enter this: 

<table border="1">
  <tr>
    <th> Head A  </th> <th> Head B  </th>
  </tr><tr>
    <td> Cell A2 </td> <td> Cell B2 </td>
  </tr><tr>
    <td> Cell A3 </td> <td> Cell B3 </td>
  </tr>
</table>

It is displayed as a table like this:

Head A Head B
Cell A2 Cell B2
Cell A3 Cell B3

3. Use preformatted text with <verbatim> tags

Text I enter gets wrapped around. How can I keep the formatting as it is? See "Text enclosed..."

Can I include images and pictures?

Yes, this is possible. The easiest way of including images is to attach a GIF, JPG or PNG file to a topic and then to include it with text %ATTACHURL%/myImage.gif . FileAttachment has more.

There are actually two ways of including inline images.

1. Using URL ending in .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png

This is a simple and automatic way of including inline images. Simply write the URL of the image file, this will create the inline image for you. Note: The images must be accessible as a URL.

2. Using <img> tag

This is a manual process where you have more control over the rendering of the image. Use the <img> tag of HTML to include GIF, JPG and PNG files. Note: The display of the topic is faster if you include the WIDTH and HEIGHT parameters that have the actual image size. http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/special/img.html has more on inline images.

Can I write colored text?

Place text you would like to specify a color inside <font color="colorCode"> and </font> tags.

"colorCode" is the hexadecimal RGB color code. The color is composed by specifying the red, green and blue components of the color in hexadecimal notation. For example, to specify white, the red, green and blue components are 255, 255, 255, so you would use ="#ffffff=". You can use StandardColors or common color codes:

Black: "#000000" Green: "#008000" Silver: "#c0c0c0" Lime: "#00ff00"
Gray: "#808080" Olive: "#808000" White: "#ffffff" Yellow: "#ffff00"
Maroon: "#800000" Navy: "#000080" Red: "#ff0000" Blue: "#0000ff"
Purple: ="#800080"= Teal: "#008080" Fuchsia: "#ff00ff" Aqua: "#00ffff"

-- MikeMannix? - 10 Sep 2001
-- PeterThoeny? - 13 Sep 2001