Many Matters | PmWiki / Wiki Styles

authors (basic)

Wikistyle basics

WikiStyles allow authors to modify the color and other styling attributes of a page’s contents. A wikistyle is written using percent-signs, as in %red% or %bgcolor=blue%.

The most basic use of wikistyles is to change text attributes such as color, background color, and font. PmWiki defines several wikistyles for changing the text color to %black%, %white%, %red%, %yellow%, %blue%, %gray%, %silver%, %maroon%, %green%, %navy%, and %purple%.

The basket contains %red% apples, %blue% blueberries, %purple% eggplant,
%green% limes, %% and more.

The basket contains apples, blueberries, eggplant, limes, and more.

For colors other than the predefined colors, use the %color=...% wikistyle. (Note: RGB colors (#rrggbb) should always be specified with lowercase letters to avoid WikiWord conflicts.)

I'd like to have some %color=#ff7f00% tangerines%%,  too!

I’d like to have some tangerines, too!

To change the background color, use %bgcolor=...% as a wikistyle:

This sentence contains %bgcolor=green yellow% yellow text on a green
background.

This sentence contains yellow text on a green background.

See PmWiki:WikiStyleColors for more color help.

Scopes

Wikistyles can also specify a scope; with no scope, the style is applied to any text that follows up to the next wikistyle specification or the end of the paragraph, whichever comes first. Including a scope changes the specification to apply to the whole paragraph (%p ...%), an entire list (%list ...%), an item within a list (%item ...%), or any block (%block ...%).

%p bgcolor=#ffeeee% The wikistyle specification at the beginning of this
line applies to the entire paragraph, even if there are %blue% other
wikistyle specifications %% in the middle of the paragraph.

The wikistyle specification at the beginning of this line applies to the entire paragraph, even if there are other wikistyle specifications in the middle of the paragraph.

The >>style<< block can be used to apply a wikistyle to a large block of items. The style is applied until the next >><< is encountered.

>>blue font-style=italic bgcolor=#ffffcc<<
Everything after the above line is styled with blue italic text,

This includes
    preformatted text
* lists
-> indented items
>><<

Everything after the above line is styled with blue italic text,

This includes

    preformatted text

lists

indented items

Wikistyle attributes

The style attributes recognized within a wikistyle specification are:

    ------------ CSS -------------          —HTML—
    color               bgcolor             class 
    background-color    margin              id
    text-align          padding             hspace
    text-decoration     border              vspace
    font-size           float               target
    font-family         list-style          rel
    font-weight         width*              accesskey
    font-style          height*             value

    Special: define, apply

The attributes in the first two columns correspond to the cascading style sheet (CSS) properties of the same name. The attributes in the last column apply only to specific items:

class= and id= assign a CSS class or identifier to an HTML element
target=name opens links that follow in a browser window called “name”
rel=name in a link identifies the relationship of a target page
accesskey=x uses ‘x’ as a shortcut key for the link that follows
value=9 sets the number of the current ordered list item

* The width and height attributes have asterisks because they are handled specially for <img …/> tags. If used by themselves (i.e., without anything providing an “apply=“ parameter to the wikistyle), then they set the ‘width=‘ and ‘height=‘ attributes of any <img … /> tags that follow. Otherwise, they set the ‘width:’ and ‘height:’ properties of the element being styled.

Enabling Styles

Styles not listed above can be enabled by a PMWiki Adminstrator by modifying the local/config.php file. For instance to enable the “line-height” style attribute add the line

    $WikiStyleCSS[] = ‘line-height’;

to the local/config.php file.

Custom style shortcuts

The define= attribute can be used to assign a shorthand name to any wikistyle specification. This shorthand name can then be reused in later wikistyle specifications.

%define=box block bgcolor=#ddddff border="2px dotted blue"%

%box% [@
$ echo "Hello world"
Hello World
$ exit
@]

%box font-weight=bold color=green% [@
$ echo "I said, HELLO"
@]

$ echo "Hello world"
Hello World
$ exit

$ echo "I said, HELLO"

Tip: It’s often a good idea to put common style definitions into Group Header pages so that they can be shared among multiple pages in a group. Or, the wiki administrator can predefine styles site-wide as a local customization (see CustomWikiStyles).

Tip: Use custom style definitions to associate meanings with text instead of just colors. For example, if warnings are to be displayed as green text, set %define=warn green% and then use %warn% instead of %green% in the document. Then, if you later decide that warnings should be styled differently, it’s much easier to change the (one) definition than many occurrences of %green% in the text.

Predefined style shortcuts

PmWiki defines a number of style shortcuts.

Text colors: black, white, red, yellow, blue, gray, silver, maroon, green, navy, purple (shortcut for %color=...%)
Justification: %center% and %right%
Images and boxes
- Floating left or right: %rfloat% and %lfloat%
- Framed items: %frame%, %rframe%, and %lframe%
- Thumbnail sizing: %thumb%
Open link in new window: %newwin% (shortcut for %target=_blank%)
Comments: %comment% (shortcut for %display=none%)
Ordered lists: %decimal%, %roman%, %ROMAN%, %alpha%, %ALPHA% (see also Cookbook:OutlineLists)

Examples

WikiStyleExamples contains a number of examples of ways to use wikistyles in pages.

Known Issues

Percents in style definitions (like: %block width=50% %) require the use of “pct” instead of “%”.

From Many Matters

PmWiki: Wiki Styles