Eclipse WikiText

This article introduces WikiText and explain how to install it into your Eclipse IDE; how to write a brief document and how to transform a source document in HTML and DocBook formats.

  1. WikiText
    1. Details
  2. Getting Wikitext
    1. Install WikiText into Eclipse IDE
    2. Downloading WikiText standalone
    3. Creating a new document
  3. Conversion in Eclipse
  4. Conversion using Ant build scripts
  5. References

WikiText

WikiText is an open source, lightweight Wiki editor; for writing offline documentation, with a multitude of wiki dialects. It has a WYSIWYG preview to see results; and can transform documents in several output formats, included html, docbook and EclipseHelp.

WikiText is available both as Eclipse extension, provided with Mylyn project, and as a standalone distribution, including ANT tasks to automatize transformations.

Details

WikiText provides a lightweight markup editor for Eclipse. The editor is registered against all files with following extensions: *.textile, *.tracwiki, *.mediawiki, *.confluence

These are simple language, widespread in enterprise wikis, and with some common traits. look at some syntax examples for textile, tracwiki, mediawiki and “confluence”:

for details on syntax, look at examples of , or search internet

At the end of editing you could transform the wiki text into different formats, like *.html, *.docbook, *.eclipsehelp, etc..

In this article I show how to add WikiText as eclipse plugin, write a brief article and transform it into html and docbook.

Getting Wikitext

You can get WikiText in two ways: install as eclipse plugin, or getting the standalone distribution.

Install WikiText into Eclipse IDE

to Install Mylyn WikiText into Eclipse Juno Platform, start from menu: Help > Install New Software.. , and the Available Software wizard starts.
In the wizard select the Juno update site ; type “myl” to filter results, and install those two (Mylyn) components components (look at the image below).

  • Mylyn WikiText
  • Mylyn Wikitext: Additional Generators (Incubation)

Downloading WikiText standalone

To get the standalone version, you have to go to Mylyn download page then click on the Download WikiText Standalone link. Note: inks may change, depending on changes on eclipse.org main site )

Once downloaded unpack it then extract into a folder, in which you could find documentation and needed jar for execution.

Creating a new document

To start using WikiText, just create a new file, with one of the handled extensions: *.textile, *.tracwiki, *.mediawiki, *.confluence .

For this instance I would like to create a basic *.textile file, whose content is visible in figure (or available for download).

If you need specific indication on how to write a textile file, look at 2 nd reference

Conversion in Eclipse

Inside Eclipse you can produce html or docbook output documents.
To convert select the input document, right-click on it then select WikiText > Generate ..

Conversion using Ant build scripts

Ant build scripts can be used to drive markup conversion from Textile markup

References