XWiki Syntax 2.0

General

Introduction

2.0 Introduction

Starting with XWiki 1.7 we've introduced a new wiki syntax. We've named the old syntax the XWiki Syntax 1.0 and the new syntax was logically called the XWiki Syntax 2.0. The main reasons for introducing the new syntax were:

• Fix the limitations and ambiguities of the XWiki 1.0 syntax (which was inspired by both Radeox - the underlying rendering engine - and TWiki).
  • Not optimal symbols. For example the symbol for bold was single stars. This was causing trouble when users were entering text containing stars since that text was mistakenly considered to be bold when it wasn't. Hence we've rationalized the syntax by using at least double characters everywhere. 
  • Ambiguities. For example there was an ambiguity between a bold item starting a line and a bullet list. Resolving the ambiguities was required in order to rewrite the WYSIWYG editor so that it could be deterministic.
• Be closer to the Creole 1.0 syntax which is becoming a standard for wiki syntax. In addition the Creole community has taken the time to analyze all the existing wiki syntaxes before deciding on symbols. The choices made are thus very good.

In addition to these XWiki-specific syntaxes we've also changed our underlying rendering engine (was Radeox previously) in favor of our own engine which is superset wrapper around Wikimodel and Doxia (and possibly others in the future). This has allowed us to provide other syntaxes in the wiki: MediaWiki, Confluence, JSPWiki, Creole, TWiki and more.

General Remarks

2.0 General Remarks

XWiki Syntax 2.0 corrects some errors or ambiguous syntax entered by the user as shown in the examples in the table below.

Other Syntaxes

1.0 Other Syntaxes

Other syntaxes are also available.

Editing

Paragraphs

2.0 Paragraphs

Paragraphs are text elements separated by 2 or more new lines.

Headings

2.0 Headings

= level 1 = 
== level 2 ==
=== level 3 ===
==== level 4 ====
===== level 5 =====
====== level 6 ======

Text Formatting

2.0 Text Formatting

Horizontal Line

2.0 Horizontal Line

(% style="border-color:blue" %)
----

Lists

2.0 Lists

* item 1
** item 2
*** item 3
* item 4

1. item 1
11. item 2
111. item 3
1. item 4

1. item 1
1*. item 2
1*. item 3
1. item 4

(% style="list-style-type: square" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: disc" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: lower-alpha" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: upper-alpha" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: lower-roman" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: upper-roman" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: lower-greek" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: upper-greek" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: hiragana" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: hiragana-iroha" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: katakana" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: katakana-iroha" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: armenian" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: hebrew" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: georgian" %)
* item 1
* item 2

(% style="list-style-type: cjk-ideographic" %)
* item 1
* item 2

Definition Lists

2.0 Definition Lists

; term
: definition

; term 1
: definition 1
:; term 2
:: definition 2

(% style="color:blue" %)
; term
: definition

New Line/Line Breaks

2.0 New Line Line Breaks

A new line is a carriage return. A line break is a forced new line that can appear anywhere in the text.

Links

2.0 Links

Feature	XWiki Syntax 2.0	Result
Link to a page in the current Space	[[WebHome]]	XWiki
Link with a label	[[label>>WebHome]] XWiki Syntax is supported inside link labels.	label
Link with XWiki Syntax in the label	[[**bold label**>>WebHome]]	bold label
Link to a page with the space specified	[[Main.WebHome]]	Main
Link to a subwiki	[[subwiki:Main.WebHome]]	Main
Link that opens in a new window	[[label>>WebHome||target="_blank"]]	label
Link to a URL directly in the text	This is a URL: https://xwiki.org	This is a URL: https://xwiki.org
Link to a URL	[[https://xwiki.org]]	https://xwiki.org
Link to a URL with a label	[[XWiki>>https://xwiki.org]]	XWiki
Link to an email address	[[[email protected]>>mailto:[email protected]]]	[email protected]
Image Link	[[image:[email protected]>>Space1.Page1]]
Image Link with image parameters	[[[[image:[email protected]||width="26" height="26"]]>>Space1.Page1]]
Link to an attachment on the current page	[[text>>attach:img.png]]	text
Link to an attachment in a different page	[[text>>attach:[email protected]]]	text
Link to an Anchor in a page	[[label>>Space.Page#anchor]]	label
Link to a Heading in a page	[[label>>Space.Page#HMyheading]]	label
Link to an Anchor in the current page	[[label>>#anchor]]	label

XWiki Syntax 2.0 Link Specification

The full format of a link is [label>>] (resource) [@interWikiAlias] [||parameters]

• label: An optional string which will be displayed to the user as the link name when rendered. The label may contain XWiki Syntax. If no label is specified a default label will be generated. The generation pattern can be changed, see the Admin Guide. Example: My Page
• resource: The full link reference using the following syntax: (reference) [?queryString] [#anchor]
  • reference: The link reference in one of the following forms:
    • URL: Any URL in the form of protocol://path. Examples: http://xwiki.org, https://svn.xwiki.org/
    • Wiki page reference in the form [[wikiName:] spaceNameList.] (pageName). Examples: WebHome, Main.WebHome, mywiki:Main.WebHome
      • wikiName: An optional string containing the name of a wiki. The link will point to a page inside that wiki. Example: mywiki
      • spaceNameList: An optional dot-separated list of wiki Space names. If no space is specified the current space is used. Examples: Main, A.B, A.B.C
      • pageName: A required string containing the name of the linked wiki page. Example: WebHome
    • Attachment reference in the form attach: [wikiPageName@] (attachmentName). Examples: attach:img.png, attach:mywiki:[email protected]
      • attach: A required string identifying the resource as attachment.
      • wikiPageName: An optional string referencing the page that holds the attachment, see "Wiki page" above.
      • attachmentName: Name of the attachment as it is stored in the wiki.
    • Email address in the form mailto: (emailAddress) (#anchor is not valid). Example: mailto:[email protected]
      • mailto: A required string identifying the resource as email.
      • emailAddress: Targeted email address. Example: "[email protected]"
  • queryString: An optional query string for specifying parameters that will be used in the rendered URL. Example: mydata1=5&mydata2=Hello
  • anchor: An optional anchor name pointing to an anchor defined in the referenced link. Note that in XWiki anchors are automatically created for headings and images. Example: HTableOfContents
• interWikiAlias: An optional Inter Wiki alias as defined in the InterWiki Map (see the Admin Guide). This is only valid for wiki page names. Example: wikipedia
• parameters: An optional list of parameters passed to the link. Example: target="_blank" (open in new window)

Tables

2.0 Tables

Allows to easily create content in table format. Parameters for table, row or cell are also supported in XWiki Syntax 2.0.

|=Title 1|=Title 2
|Word 1|Word 2

!=Title 1!=Title 2
!!Word 1!!Word 2

(% style="background-color:red;text-align:center" %)
|=Title 1|=(% style="background-color:yellow" %)Title 2
|Word 1|Word 2

{{velocity}}
$xwiki.ssfx.use("js/xwiki/table/table.css")
$xwiki.jsfx.use("js/xwiki/table/tablefilterNsort.js", true)
{{/velocity}}

(% class="grid sortable filterable doOddEven" id="tableid" %)
(% class="sortHeader" %)|=Title 1|=Title 2
|Cell 11|Cell 12
|Cell 21|Cell 22

Images

2.0 Images

Feature	XWiki Syntax 2.0	Result
Image from attachment on current page	image:img.png
Image from attachment on another page	image:[email protected]
Image with parameters	[[image:img.png||width="25" height="25"]]
Image with caption	[[~[~[XWiki~>~>https://www.xwiki.org~]~] supports captions.>>image:img.png]]
Images located at URL	image:https://some/url/img.png

XWiki Syntax 2.0 Image Specification

The full format of an image is either image: (reference) or [[{caption>>}image: (reference) {||parameters}]]

• caption: An optional caption. May contain arbitrary XWiki 2.0 syntax but nested link syntax must be escaped using ~. The caption is only supported when the image syntax is the only content of a paragraph. The captioned image may also be wrapped in a link. In this case, the link will contain the image but not the caption.
• image: A required string identifying the resource as image.
• reference: The reference to the image that shall be displayed in one of the following forms:
  • URL: Any URL to an image in the form of http://path/imageName. Example: http://domain.org/path/img.png
  • Attachment reference in the form {{{wikiName:} space.} page@} (imageName)
    • wikiName: An optional string containing the name of a wiki. The image reference will point to an image attached to a page inside that wiki. Example: mywiki
    • space: An optional wiki Space name. If no space is specified the current space is used. Example: Main
    • page: An optional string containing the name of the wiki page to which the referenced image is attached. Example: WebHome
    • imageName: A required string containing the name of the image attached to a page as it is stored in the wiki.
• parameters: An optional list of space-separated parameters passed to the image. Example: width="800" height="600" alt="img.png" title="My nice image"
  • HTML attributes: All attributes defined by the HTML standard will be added to the rendered HTML <img> tag.
    • style: CSS style information that should be applied to the image. Examples: style="float:right;height:50" (image on right side, height 50 px), style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;width:80%" (image centered, width 80% of block width), style="vertical-align:bottom" (text starts at bottom of picture)
    • height: A parameter that defines the height of the displayed image. The value should be presented either in pixel (example: height="80") or in pixel related to the height of the block containing the image (example: height="40%").
    • width: A parameter that defines the width of the displayed image. The value should be presented either in pixel (example: width="80") or in pixel related to the width of the block containing the image (example: width="40%").
    • title: A parameter that defines the title the displayed image which will be visible when hovering the mouse trigger over the image, for instance. Example: title="My nice image"
    • alt: A parameter that defines which text should be displayed if the browser is not able to display the image. Since this is a required HTML attribute XWiki will use the file name instead if the alt parameter is not defined. Example: alt="img.png"
    • More: A more in depth explanation on the HTML <img> tag including more attributes can be reviewed in the HTML standard.

Advanced

Verbatim

2.0 Verbatim

Allow to enter content that will not be formatted (in other words the XWiki Syntax will not be taken into account).

{{{
multi line
**verbatim**
content
}}}

multi line
**verbatim**
content

Quotations

2.0 Quotations

Allows to quote some text.

> john said this
I said ok

> john said this
>> marie answered that
I said ok

Groups

2.0 Groups

Groups can be used to insert another document inline directly into the current document. This allows for example to insert complex elements or style inside a list item, inside a table cell or a paragraph. Groups are delimited by the following syntactic elements: (((...))). One Group can contain another Group and there is no limit of imbrication.

|=Header 1|=Header 2|=Header 3
|Cell One|(((
= Embedded document =

Some embedded paragraph.

* list item one
* list item two
  ** sub-item 1
  ** sub-item 2
))) | Cell Three

Next paragraph in the top-level document

(% class="myClass" style="color:blue" %)(((blue paragraphs

inside myClass)))

Escapes

2.0 Escapes

Allows to escape XWiki Syntax.

Parameters

2.0 Parameters

With XWiki Syntax 2.0 it's possible to pass parameters to the different syntax elements and also to blocks of text. This is used for example to style them. You can set any parameter key/value pair you want. The XHTML renderer will pass these parameters as XHTML attributes to the underlying XHTML representation of the different syntax elements.

(% class="myClass" style="myStyle" id="myId" %)
= heading =

<h1 class="myClass" style="myStyle" id="myId">heading</h1>

Programming

Macros

2.0 Macros

There is only one kind of macro in XWiki Syntax 2.0, which is called by the syntax: {{macroname param1="value1" ... paramN="valueN"}}...{{/macroname}}. For macros without content there's a short notation: {{macroname param1="value1" ... paramN="valueN"/}}

{{code language="java"}}
System.out.println("Hello World!");
{{/code}}

Macros in this wiki

HTML

2.0 HTML

Scripts

2.0 Scripts

{{velocity}}
#set ($var = "whatever")
{{/velocity}}

{{groovy}}
def var = "whatever"
{{/groovy}}