LOona markup notation

LOona's text markup is based on indentations and the systematic use of text elements that you would also expect in good-looking plain text documentation. Albeit loosely based on the markup notation of other, more popular WIKIs, LOona's markup notation has some features to offer which recommend it especially for technical documentation.

NOTE: To understand these instructions, click on 'Edit' to see the plain text representation; use 'Preview' to try out some markup of your own.

Block

Text of a consistent indentation level running uninterrupted by empty lines is combined into blocks. Lines in blocks can break at any position; the line breaks are not included to the result:

This is a block.

This is another block.

Indentation

Indentation is measured in the consecutive number of spaces at the beginning of a line; different indentation levels are taken into account accordingly:

This is a block.

This is another block.

This is a third block.

Preformatted

For blocks of code and other kinds of preformatted text use an indentation that is two levels deeper than the current level, e.g.:

Normal text 

/* Code markup */

Back to normal

Code

Inlined code is marked up between double braces. It may occur at any position in a line, but it must be the same line in which the opening and the closing of the markup occurs:

This is code_markup in running text.

Lists

There are two types of items in lists; soft and bulleted items. They are recognized by their initiatory character (dash or asterisk), followed by a whitespace at the beginning of a line:

  • soft item
  • bulleted item

Soft items are, by the way, a natural means to enforce line breaks:

  • this is a line,
  • this is another line,
  • this is a third line.

Lists follow the same indentation rules as normal text:

  • one
  • two
  • three
    • eins
    • zwei
      • ichi
      • ni
      • san
    • drei

NOTE: Although not striclty required, it is recommended to indent lists by one level. This will help the parser to avoid ambiguities; otherwise, when a regular block follows an unindented list, it would be concatenated with the last item, as empty lines are not sufficient to break out from a list.

Images

Image references are enclosed by at signs:

Links

Links are enclosed in double squared brackets:

As for external links, LOona's configuration file offers a global option to decide whether external links should open in a new browser window or not. (Many people disregard this feature, while businesses seem to swear by it.)

Tables

Lines running uninterrupted with at least one cell separator in each of them automatically form a table. The cell separator is a double vertical bar:

First cell Second cell
Third cell Fourth cell

It is also possible to create empty cells as long as the separators are present. Note, by the way, that cell separators do not necessarily need to be aligned exactly below each other:

First cell third cell
fifth cell

Headings

Headings occupy an entire line. They are enclosed by at least one equal sign and a whitspace on each side; the more equal signs, the less significant the section:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Rules

A minimum of four dashes is interpreted as a horizontal rule. Rules may occur at arbitrary indentation levels, but otherwise, they must occupy the whole line:

before the rule

after the rule

Emphasis

An emphasized portion of text may occur at any position in a line, but the opening and the closing of the markup must occur in the same line to be recognized.

The emphasized text is surrounded by at least two ticks on each side; the more ticks, the stronger the emphasis.

  • normal
  • emphasis
  • strong emphasis
  • very strong emphasis

Nodes

Nodes translate to anchors in a document, and a browser will usually interprete them as jump targets. Visually, nodes translate to headlines also; as usual, the number of equal signs with which the markup is paired determines the significance and therefore size of a headline:

Large

Medium

Small node with alternate text

In addition to normal node/headlines, there are nodes which are displayed as code markup. This is especially useful for jump targets in a technical documentation:

Large code node

Medium code node

Small code node

When referencing a node, use a number sign # followed by the Node name. This by the way also works for referencing nodes in other documents.

For example, this link will take you to the beginning of this document:

Top of document

NOTE: Don't be too adventurous when selecting a node name; if you need blanks or punctuation or if in doubt, use the alternate text notation.

Final note

If in doubt, use fewer markup. Sparse application of compositional elements usually leads to better readability and stylistic clarity. If you can't produce the looks you project, first and foremost think of improving your stylesheet.

Ok, for the desperate: There's a single lone hack in LOona's markup format which allows you to produce additional padding between elements, list items which may appear to be empty, etc. It can come to the rescue in some darned situations. It's the non-breaking space; produce it either by inserting the character code 160 (see your browser or operating system manuals on how to achieve this), or by writing the HTML equivalent ('   '). (See the plain text representation of this document, as it cannot be escaped.)