{CVS: $Id: manual-en.txt,v 1.3 2002/04/11 19:51:07 villate Exp $ }

{Title: Parsewiki's manual}
{Author: Jaime E. Villate}
{Organization: University of Porto}
{Address: [mailto:villate@gnu.org villate@gnu.org] }
{Version: 0.4}
{Date: April 11, 2002}
{Language: en}

{Abstract: Parsewiki is a program that can transform a text file \
with a very minimal ''Wiki'' style syntax into various other formats, \
including HTML, XHTML, Docbook and LaTeX. This manual \
is also a good example of the type of syntax understood by parsewiki.}

{Copyright: Copyright, 2002 Jaime E. Villate. \
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under \
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later \
version published by the Free Software Foundation; without any Invariant \
Sections. A copy of the license is included in the file GFDL.}

= Introduction =

In this manual we introduce a method to create documents, aimed at ease
of writing for the author and keeping the content to the minimum required
without mixing it with commands for presentation of the text. You just have to
know a few basic rules to begin writing documents that can be then transformed
into various documentation formats with the '''parsewiki''' program.

The main advantage of ''wiki'' systems is that a final version of the text can
be easily written down, almost as simply as we write an e-mail message, with a
minimum of formatting tags. The source document can be easily read or sent by
e-mail without scaring people away with strange tags. Another big advantage of
this system is that no matter what the author writes in the source file, there
will always be an output file when processed by parsewiki. There won't be any
syntax errors that prevents the output file to be formed; what might happen is
that the result is not what we expected, but there will be no formating
errors. This way of writing documents has proven to be very useful in websites
created by public contributions, such as the [http://www.wikipedia.com
Wikipedia] encyclopedia.

To begin learning this system, it is recommended that you process this
manual's source file ([[manual-en.txt]]) with ,,parsewiki,, to
produce an HTML version:

   parsewiki manual-en.txt > manual-en.html

You should then read the HTML version side by side with the source file, to
understand how the formatting rules work. Those who know how to get a
printable version from a ''Docbook/XML'' or ''LaTeX'' file should also use the
following commands to create Docbook/XML or LaTeX versions of the manual

   parsewiki -f docbook manual-en.txt > manual-en.xml
   parsewiki -f latex   manual-en.txt > manual-en.tex

= Basic rules =
The first rule you must remember is that the text in each line has to start at
the first column. If you leave any space at the beginning of the line, the
whole line will be interpreted as a program listing which will be presented
verbatim in the output file. The lines in this paragraph I am writing have no
space at the beginning, with the result that they are appended together to
form a nicely formatted paragraph; we would not want the same thing to happen
when we present a computer program, in which case we should add space at the
beginning of each line. Consider for instance the following subroutine which
makes part of ,,parsewiki,,:

 sub WikiHeading
 {
   my ($depth, $text) = @_;
   $depth = length($depth);
   $depth = 5  if ($depth > 5);
   return $OpenItem{'h'.$depth} . $text . $CloseItem{'h'.$depth} . "\n";
 }

To mark the end of a paragraph, you should leave at least one empty line. The
title of a section should be written in between two = symbols, without any
space at the beginning of the line, but there should be space between the
equal signs and the text; for example:
    = Section 1 =

Subsections of various levels are obtained by increasing the number of equal
signs on each side, as in:
    === A third level section ===

= Lists =

There are three types of lists: ordered lists, unnumbered lists and
descriptive lists (glossaries). Each item in a list must go into a single line
and there should not be any empty lines in between two items of the same
list, unless one of them is the last item and the other one is the first item
in a new list. When the contents of an item is too long, you can use the line
continuation character (backslash) to split it into shorter lines.

== Unnumbered lists ==

Each item in an unnumbered list must begin by an asterisk (in the first column
always); consider for instance:
* You may leave space after the asterisks.
* The list ends when a line without a * in the first column is found.
* You can split \
the contents of an item into several \
lines, if you use the line continuation character (\) at the end of \
each line you split.
This sentence is no longer part of the list and it marks the
beginning of a new paragraph, even though no (optional) empty lines were left
on top of it in the source file.

== Ordered Lists ==

# They work in a similar way to the previous ones.
# The difference is that you must use # rather than *.
# We will cover nested lists later on.

== Descriptive lists ==

These are lists of terms, followed by their descriptions, as in a dictionary
or glossary. Each item starts with a semicolon (;) in the first column,
followed by the term, followed by colon (:) and finally the description, all
in a single line. For instance:

;HTML: Used to publish contents on the web or to view it locally \
with a web browser.
;XHTML: The language proposed as a future replacement for HTML, with all the \
advantages associated to XML.
;DocBook: A type of XML documents very much in fashion in the editorial world.
;LaTeX: Without a doubt, the best format to produce scientific texts of high \
quality.

== Nested lists ==
To include a list inside another one, we must increase the ''level'' of
the list (or lists) which should be placed inside another; for instance:

# This is a fist level list
# Within this second item there is a second level list:
** The level is increased by increasing the count of the special character\
 in the first column.
** In this case we have used two asterisks instead of one.
# We continue here with our initial list. If we wanted this item to start\
 a new list, we would have left a blank line.

# For instance, we just started here a new list.
# Which will include a descriptive list:
;;option -t: A file containing a template to be used instead of the default\
 one.
;;option -f: Output format. It can be:
*** html
*** xhtml
*** docbook
*** latex
# The list ends here.

= Hyperlinks =

Any time we write a URL, for example http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl,
it will be recognized by '''parsewiki''' and a link to the URL will appear in
the output format. If you want to associate some text to the link, you should
write the URL, followed by the text, inside square brackets and without
leaving any spaces after [. Example: I am a proud member of
[http://www.gnu.org The GNU Project].

Internal links for which a URL without starting ,,http://,, is given, will
have to be inside double brackets, [[ and ]], to be recognized as such. For
instance, if the source file for this manual is in the same directory where
the HTML version has been generated, the HTML page will have a link to the
source file here: [[manual.txt]]. Or if you want to use some text:
[[manual.txt Source file for this manual]].

= Figures =

If a URL ends with a name with an extension recognized as a graphic file
viewable by web browsers, the URL will be replaced by the image (when the
selected output file format is HTML or XHTML).
For example http://savannah.gnu.org/icons/back.png

If you want the figure to be detached from the text, you should
place it into a separate paragraph:

http://savannah.gnu.org/images/floating.jpg

(This figure will only appear in the HTML and XHTML versions, because the
other formats do not support the display of figures on the web).
If we associate some text to the URL of the figure, rather than being
displayed on the page, a hyperlink to it will be given:

[http://www.gnu.org/graphics/gnu-head-sm.jpg GNU's Logo]

If the figure is inside a local directory, its complete path and filename
should be given inside [[ and ]]. It is necessary that the filename end with
one of the extensions recognized by ,,parsewiki,,

  jpg jpeg png bmp gif

(which can go in upper case too). If that's not the case, it will be necessary
to create a version in one of those formats. In the case of a LaTeX file
obtained with ,,parsewiki,,, even if we use one of those formats, it is a file
with the same name but with extension ,,.ps,, or ,,.eps,,, will be required by
,,dvips,,; if ,,pdflatex,, is used instead, it will expect to find files
ending on ,,.jpg,,, ,,.jpeg,,, or ,,pdf,,.

This manual comes with a vector figure ,,barra.ps,, which comes in PNG format
too (,,barra.png,,). It can be seen in all the output formats if we use:

[[barra.png]]

The PostScript version produced by ,,latex,, and ,,dvips,, will use the file
,,barra.ps,,. The PDF version obtained with ,,pdflatex,, will use the file
,,barra.png,,, since the file ,,barra.pdf,, does not exist.

= Other fonts =

You can get italics by using two consecutive apostrophes, or using the
HTML tag : ''like this'' or
like this. Bold face is obtained with 
three apostrophes or the  tag: '''3 apostrophes''' or
strong. To obtain fixed-space font, as in a typewriter, you
should use two consecutive commas, or the tag <tt>; for
instance ",,ls --color,,".
In the three cases the text in a different font should be inside a single
line; looking at the source file of this manual, you will see that I have just
used that feature to typeset the tag 
without a companion  (I've done it again :-). If the text is too long,
use backslashes to split it.

= Meta information =

Some optional information about the document can be included within the front
matter, by using the syntax: {name: contents}. If ''name'' is one of the
following:

  title author date organization address version abstract copyright

the companion contents will be displayed in the document's front matter.
You can use any other name not included in the list, but its content will be
silently ignored, unless you redefine the output template used.
All meta information should be together, at the beginning of the document, and
with no spaces at the beginning of the lines. Otherwise it might be
interpreted as normal text.

= Templates ==

In any of the four output formats that ,,parsewiki,, can produce, the output
file is created from default templates. In the directory ,,templates,,
distributed with this package you can find copies of the default
templates. You can use them as a model to create custom templates. For
example, if we have created a custom template in ,,~/template.tex,,, it can be
used giving a ,,-t,, option to ,,parsewiki,,: parsewiki -f latex -t
~/template.tex file.txt > file.tex

= Conclusions =

The simple system we have introduced in this manual allows us to create simple
documents in an easy and fast way. Due to its simplicity, you should not
expected to work for more complex documents; however, this method can be used
to create an initial version which can then be further developed working on
the LaTeX or DocBook file created with this method.

This is a preliminary beta release, and probably filled with bugs. Among the
future development plans are the implementation of tables, bibliographies and
figures captions.

