Wikitext

Wikitext is a document written in a wiki markup language, such as the current one explained in  (see also  and ). It is a mixture of content, markup, and metadata. The current and old versions of all pages of a wiki are stored in the database in the txttable>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Text table|text table, in the form of wikitext.

User documentation

 * Help:Wikitext examples
 * m:Help:Downloading pages, Wikipedia:Glossary

Developer documentation

 * Specs/wikitext/1.0.0 – as of August 2016, the URI used by Parsoid to identify the version of Wikitext it is assuming

Alternatives to MediaWiki Wikitext

 * Wikitax – 2002 proposal
 * Lightweight markup language – Wikipedia article describing markup languages for cases "where it may be necessary to read the raw document as well as the final rendered output"

Implementation

 * [http://web.archive.org/web/20190406065119/https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/master/php/classParser.html PHP Parser] – Generated documentation from comments embedded in the source code. A summary of what the PHP parser is as described on that page: "Processes wiki markup (which uses a more user-friendly syntax, such as "  " for making links), and provides a one-way transformation of that wiki markup it into (X)HTML output / markup (which in turn the browser understands, and can display)."
 * Parsoid – translation tool for MediaWiki which translates between html-rdf>Parsoid/HTML5 DOM with RDFa|HTML5 DOM with RDFa and MediaWiki Wikitext.

Testing
We have provided important compatibility information, which helps describe expected behavior for converting wikitext to HTML.


 * parser-tests>Special:MyLanguage/Parser tests</>|Parser tests – Our tests in MediaWiki core contain the authoritative source for Wikitext markup compatibility testing.
 * parsoid-tests>Wikitext/Parsoid test cases</>|Parsoid test cases ([<tvar|phab>https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/GPAR/browse/master/tests/parserTests.txt</> parserTests.txt on Diffusion]) – a forked version of the MediaWiki core tests, used by Parsoid. Besides the wt2html mode that the PHP parser supports, Parsoid's parser tests runner also enables several other testing modes not supported by the PHP parser (wt2wt, html2wt, html2html, randomized edits for testing selective serialization, manual edits for controlled testing of serialization). These tests are manually synchronized using scripts in the Parsoid codebase.

Discussions from 2015 and later

 * focus-2015>Architecture focus 2015</>|Architecture focus 2015 – 2015 discussion at Lyon Hackathon about the future of MediaWiki, including content representation and transclusion
 * rfc-spec>Requests for comment/A Spec For Wikitext</>|Requests for comment/A Spec For Wikitext – RFC which defines a framework for writing a Wikitext spec, should we choose to write one (discussed in <tvar|phab>E259</> in August 2016)
 * handling>Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Handling wiki content beyond plaintext</>|Handling wiki content beyond plaintext – Discussions planned to occur at <tvar|wikidev17>WikiDev17</>

Discussions prior to 2015

 * markup>Markup spec</>|Markup spec – early attempt to use a standard metasyntax (such as Backus–Naur Form) to define MediaWiki Wikitext.
 * <tvar|parser-2011>Parser 2011</> – early Parsoid documentation, including a 2011 plan for rolling out a new version.
 * <tvar|old-standard>Wikitext standard</> – Page that was active in 2003-2005
 * <tvar|old-links>Wikitext syntax</> – Quoting the page: I'm just tipping some links onto this page for -- I will clean it up to some sort of coherence later -- Tarquin 16:45, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * <tvar|wikitext-next>Wikitext.next</> – brion>User:Brion VIBBER</>|Brion VIBBER's thoughts from 2011