Content-Type: text/html

# Wikipedia FAQ/Talk

HomePage | Wikipedia FAQ | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project

Discussions not quite ready for the FAQ.

Q. How do I get my own wiki? For example for my own web site or business or family discussions or maybe a church group or some other organisation?

A. See the [UseModWiki home page] to download the software used to build this site. (Note that the Wikipedia version is slightly different than the official release, but it is mostly the same.) --CliffordAdams

Q. I am asking this again, because I do not feel I received an adequate answer, last time. To write pages on Math, the authors need to be able to include a large number of math symbols, graphs, etc. This is not a question of linking to someone else's images. These are items we need to be able to use freely and in our own original way. It would require, at present, uploading the content to one's own websites, assuming we have them ,and linking to this. For example, to discuss differentiation and integration in Calculus, one needs to have: an Integral sign, a summmation sign, a symbolism for limits, etc. Somehow, writing, the limit of sin(x)/x as x goes to infinity, just doesn't cut it. Already we are all missing the small epsilon for "belongs to," the symbol for "is a subset of," and many more in the Abstract Algebra entries. I think this will impede the addition of much material in the Math area.

A. This is a difficult problem. Part of the problem is that html web pages don't do math symbols very well at all. So almost any solution will be a crutch. Within the next couple of years, browsers should be able to render MathML?. This will be a time of much joy. Between now and then, I'm open to suggestions, but I think this is a really hard problem.

(Added note by [Zephyr]) The best way to put in math would probably be to write it in TeX (or LaTeX?) and then use [TtH]. This will generate an HTML file with all of the math symbols in text form (no images). Here is an [example], and here is [another]. TeX is almost inarguably the standard for mathematical writing.

[TtH] produces beautiful HTML only equations, but they can't be inserted without being garbled. If this could be fixed, then [TtH] would definitely be a fabulous answer. -- TedDunning

As much as I admire Knuth, I must disagree totally. MathML? should be the ultimate standard, not TeX. For one thing, TeX is more display-oriented and MathML? is more semantics-oriented. MathML? is also the standard supported by the [World Wide Web Consortium], and will therefore likely be supported by browsers (Mozilla and Microsoft are committed to it, for example). TeX is used by a few academics, but they don't represent the real world.

Fooey on that. TeX is definitely only used by a few academics, but those few academics happen to include most of the mathematicians in the world. MathML? is not usable as an authoring tool (and TtM? exists for that anyway). TeX may be display-oriented, but few people actually write in TeX directly. Instead, they use LaTeX? or AMSTeX? which are both very semantics-oriented. In any case, I happen to live in the present and MathML? is definitely in the future and may remain there indefinitely. If we can just figure out how to support the tables that [TtH] produces then the world be a lovely place (or at least the math pages in wikipedia). -- TedDunning

It really comes down to WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) vs WYSIWYM (What You Say is What You Mean). First of all, I would like to say that TeX is used almost exclusively by anyone writing up math. Can you show me any major publication which does not require submissions to be in some variant of TeX? A popular thing about TeX is that (if you so wish) you do not need to worry about formatting, you can just say "this is a section, format it for me". You can still have this flexibility by setting the templates. Have you looked at MathML? lately? I was looking at some MathML? examples and it seems that TeX is much more straightforward to write. $x^2-4=2$ becomes <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mrow> <msup><mi>x</mi><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow> </msup> <mo>-</mo><mn>4</mn><mo>=</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow></math>. I cannot speak much for this, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I think that MathML? would have a very tough time overthrowing TeX (although it would be good for the TeX to MathML? convertor).

Note: There is exactly such a converter from the same guy who wrote [TtH] -- TedDunning

A minor but important correction to the above: It is LaTeX? in what you in principle should not need to care about formatting, just concentrate on the content and structre. Plain TeX, on the other hand, is mostly purely formatting-oriented low-level typesetting language. Unfortunately, there are times in LaTeX? when you do have to care about formatting. E.g. there are no tables that would a) work in paragraph mode and b) at the same time not require manually set the table width. But still, TeX math is the best way to write math, and I'd claim LaTeX? the best way to write structured documents, despite it's flaws. The usual rule of "least worst" applies. WYSIWYG is never an alternative to me. Lout is an alternative, and has some advantages (e.g. =>, <=) but some major disadvantages: 'x_i^2' (the natural and TeX way to write this) vs. horribly undreadable 'x sub i supp 2'. Anyway, I think this project really needs a way to write math. Current text-emulation is horrible. I'd vote for using TeX math as it is perhaps the most readable and writable format, and most mathematicians know it. Something like LaTeX2HTML? could then be used to render the formulas as images (as mathworld did...). When browsers decently support MathML?, a converter from TeX to that format can be used. Whatever people might think, MathML? is not the ultimate solution, because it is utterly unwritable.

How about using EzMath? in the pages (http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/EzMath), and having the wiki translate to MathML? or images? It's very readable (and writable) as plain text. Sample expressions: "integral of sin x from 0 to 2pi wrt x", "x^2-4=2", "x squared - 4 = 2".

Here is a compromise: you type math in TeX and see HTML and images (http://www.mathcircle.org/cgi-bin/mathwiki.pl?)

This is a very good solution since it is fast and completely portable among browsers. Getting the generated image font sizes to match up with the text would make this an excellent choice. The image description could use TeX so that Lynx users would find it useful as well. --Jonathan

Jonathan, first, welcome to Wikipedia, and second, please stay on top of this. CliffordAdams is the main programmer for UseModWiki, but I'm not sure he's interested in including functionality of the sort you describe. But if he doesn't do it, I suspect we'll be able to interest other programmers to work on his code and do it. Anyway, our math section is very active and competent and there's definitely a crying need for this sort of feature. --LMS

Q. Why don't we simply use html?

A. Good question. Wiki software does use some html, but not all of it. One reason is for simplicity when typing--for instance this text is indented because I typed a : character at the start of the line. In order to do that in HTML, I would have to type much more. The wiki syntax also prevents many common errors, like not closing a bold-tag and making all the following text be bold.

Another reason for not using raw html is security--several old versions of popular browsers have security problems that can be triggered by arbitrary "malicious HTML". Even without considering security, malicious users could do things like Javascript popup windows or page redirects if they had full HTML ability. Several "experimental" sites that allowed full-HTML editing have suffered such attacks, including a couple other wikis that allowed arbitrary HTML.

There is a "raw-HTML" option in the wiki code, but it is defaulted to "off" for the public release. I strongly recommend leaving it off for public wikis. (If that option was enabled, you could type "`<html><h1>Header</h1></html>`" to create a header.) See the [Meatball Wiki RawHtmlWiki page] for earlier discussion of these issues.

The HTML tags directly supported in the current version are i, em, b, strong, tt, and pre. There is also a pseudo-tag "nowiki" which you can use to prevent the wiki from formatting your text (like NotALink--edit to see the tags). The "code" tag acts like a combination of the tt and nowiki tags. The latest release (0.91) adds a new wiki-syntax for h1-h6 (h1 is =text=, h2 is ==text==, etc...).

The Wikipedia may have different needs than the typical wiki. The formatting rules are easy to change, and I am willing to try new things for this wiki if the maintainers of this site want changes. --CliffordAdams (Later, the Wikipedia maintainers have added support for several extra tags like h1, font, sub, sup, font, table, and a few others. Eventually the documentation will be updated.)

Q. What about non-ascii characters? We could write latin1, or (I think this would be better) use the HTML Codes (i.e. `&uuml;` for "u). This would also fix the math-symbol-problem, cause W3C-HTML 4.0 supports many of them, e.g. `&Alpha;` for a capitalized Alpha, `&alpha;` for a low one, `&int;` for a integral symbol ect. Konqueror supports this (and I think IE too, but I don't know.)

A. Just because the codes are defined in HTML4 doesn't mean they actually work in any common browser. See the Wiki special characters page for a detailed discussion of what is generally safe and what isn't. Of course, this will change over time as more browsers come to support more features.

Q. Perhaps this question is stupid or perhaps this is not the right place to ask it, but I want to be absolutely sure before committing any blunder that could hurt Wikipedia: I would like to write an article about Julian the Apostate (Roman emperor), which I would like to base on an essay I prepared for a high school course some two years ago. This essay relies heavily on a number of books. It is not cut-and-paste work and it contains just a few verbatim quotations, but nevertheless I "used copyrighted work" to write it, because I read the books and got most of the factual information from them. I guess it is not a problem to publish this essay on Wikipedia (including a bibliography, of course), or is it?

A. First, see fair use. Excerpts for comment and criticism generally fall under those guidelines. The fact that your paper was done for school adds additional protection in that context that doesn't apply to the Wikipedia context, so it is possible that excerpts that would be considered fair use for a school paper might be more problematical when placed in Wikipedia, even though we might be able to claim that this is an "educational" project. But if they are small excerpts clearly identified as such, collected and used for comment and criticism, I don't think there will be a problem. The worst thing that could happen is that one of the authors requests us to remove it; we either capitulate and suffer no consequences, or else we argue fair use if we think using the material is important enough. --LDC

Q. What constitutes a minor edit?

A. Well, obviously, simply fixing a few spelling errors is a minor edit, as (I imagine) would simple rearranging one or two sentences. A major edit is basically something that makes the entry worth relooking at--either through substantial additions or reorganisation--or fixes a major error.

Q. How can I find a list of all pages linked from a given page?

A. ???

Wow, what a huge improvement to the FAQ! Thanks a lot, Hornlo! --LMS

I kept looking in the FAQ for an explanation for the ? links (as a newcomer to wikipedia I have formed my own opinion that the wiki software puts one of these after any word it thinks should be a link but currently isn't a link -- usually words with odd capitalization or words combined with punctuation). Also, why are some links preceded by a slash?

HomePage | Wikipedia FAQ | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project
Edit text of this page | View other revisions
Last edited August 5, 2001 4:26 pm (diff)
Search: