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Markup plugins
Standard Serendipity Markup Plugins
If you use a WYSIWYG-Editor like the CKEditor you don't need to care about setting any markup options. This is automatically done for you.
A brief history of text handling:
In the old days no good Rich Text (WYSIWYG) Editors were on the market. So the design of database entries and parsing tools - the on-demand workflow - was restricted and separated to store TEXT and not HTML. You are right when you say whatever it takes, it is a combination of bytes. The only difference is that markup commands need an additional interpreter between the database and the browser. Markup Plugins and BBCode use text markers like *xxx* or [b]xxx[/b] that these parser tools convert to HTML on demand.
So the old installations days stored "text " only. The Serendipity entryproperties plugin cache option (if enabled) cached the conversion into HTML as a double database table entry to avoid this conversion performance issue on demand.
This "text-only " assumption-design works like this until today, with the one important exception, that the RICH Text (WYSIWYG) Editor does not care of this (separating) history and stores its HTML right away in the main database entries table. This is generally no problem since when you start using modern RICH Text Editors you'll never want go back to use other markup Editors. If your blog history is that you come from markdown for example and then switched over to RICH Text there is also no problem, since this is marked and so Serendipity knows what to do. But it may lead to problems when you switch markup Editors like your pants. So this warning is not a RICH Text Editor warning only. Each different "Editor " interpreter has its own demands.
nl2br
The nl2br plugin ‹ read: nl to br › is enabled by default in new Serendipity blogs. It converts newlines (nl) to break tags (<br />) in entries and comments. Whenever you press the “Enter” key on your keyboard, you’re adding a newline to your entry; it looks like you’ve ended the current line and started a new line.
HTML usually treats these newlines as if they were whitespace, converting any number of them to a single space. (For the grammatically inclined, this is why your sentences are all followed by a single space instead of two: HTML interprets any number of spaces as a single space.) To get a new line, you must enter a <p> or <br /> tag.
Rather than making you remember all this, Serendipity provides the nl2br plugin. It scans your entries for newlines, and converts them to <br /> tags automatically. Usually this results in an entry that looks as you expected, with new lines where you entered them.
When you enter plain HTML, you often add lots of newlines that you don’t want displayed. For instance, when most people add tables, they use a new line for every tag:
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>First Cell</TD>
<TD>Second Cell</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>The nl2br plugin will add <br /> tags after every line in the example. Most browsers render that as the original table, with lots of space above them.
There are four ways to avoid this behaviour:
- Use the “WYSIWYG”-Editor. Modern Serendipity versions will automatically avoid parsing entries with the nl2br plugin. Nothing to check, nothing to care!
- To disable the nl2br plugin at all, go to your Admin screen, “Configure Plugins”, and click on the nl2br plugin. Tick its box and click the button marked “Delete”. This will affect all your entries and comments.
- If you want to keep the nl2br plugin, it depends of which “Editor” is used for posting your entries. You can remove the extra newlines from your entries by hand. For instance, the example table above would become:
<table><tr><td>First Cell</td><td>Second Cell</td></tr></table>, which is an aweful work to do. Or use the “PLAIN TEXT”-Editors “nobr” button for such code pieces, telling nl2br to not parse these parts. Other markup plugins like textile and markdown will avoid parsing nl2br automagically too. - You can disable the nl2br plugin for individual entries in your entryform if you install the “Extended Properties of Entries” plugin, which is included with Serendipity.
Emoticate
This will turn some of the more common smilies/emoticons into images, which images it turns them into depends on which template you have selected. The emoticons it uses are:
‹ Smiley › | ‹ Image file ›
----------- | -------------
:'( | cry_smile.gif
:-) | regular_smile.gif
:-O | embaressed_smile.gif
:O' | embaressed_smile.gif
:-( | sad_smile.gif
:( | sad_smile.gif
:) | regular_smile.gif
8-) | shades_smile.gif
:-D | teeth_smile.gif
:D | teeth_smile.gif
8) | shades_smile.gif
:-P | tounge_smile.gif
;-) | wink_smile.gif
;) | wink_smile.gif
:P | tounge_smile.gifSerendipity Markup
This dinosaur of markup helper plugins converts a very few easy to learn markup cases into real HTML markup, just like textile or markdown do these days.
**bolded text**
_underlined text_
^superscript text^
@subscript text@
|xxxxxx|Font color change, where xxxxxx is a hex code|
#yyy# embeds #yyy# as an html entity, (#gt#, #lt# and #amp# for instance)MarkDown
MarkDown is a well known markup language parser and included in a lot of projects and text-editors.
[example.org](http://example.org/ "Title")
*emphasized* or **strong**
_emphasized_ __strong__
# This is an H1
## This is an H2The complete documentation of the syntax can be found at daringfireball.net. There is also an online tool to try it first.
Textile
Textile is a markup language parser like MarkDown but not as widespread. The markup is slightly different and in some cases easier to use than MarkDown.
"Link":http://example.org
*strong* or **bolded**
_emphasized_ or __italic__
^superscript^ and ~subscript~
-delete- and +insert+
h1. This is H1
h2. This is H2The complete documentation of the syntax and an online sandbox can be found at textile-lang.com.
BBCode
BBCode is an markup language used by the messaging board PHPBB
[b]bolded[/b]
[i]italicized[/i]
[u]underlined/inserted[/u]
[s]strikethrough/deleted[/s]
[url=http://example.org]example.org[/url]Some more examples can be found at bbcode.org, an online test tool is available too.
TextWiki
This uses the PEAR Text_Wiki rules (which is an extension of the standard WikiWikiWeb text transformation rules. Notice that it does not currently handle Wiki Words.
RegExp
This is the catch-all of markup plugins. It allows you to add custom markup to your blog with PHP regular expressions!
For instance, if you use a lot of embedded Flash video, you might want an easy way to specify it in your entries. The RegExp plugin lets you create an <flv> tag, making entry easier for you. Just go to the plugin/serendipity_event_regexpmarkup/regexps/ directory and create a file called FLV.php. In that file, put the regular expression for the tag and the replacement.
Here’s an example. It replaces the <flv> tag with everything you need for a Flash video, including dimensions and automatic start. Note that $1, $2 and so on are the text matched by the first and second set of parenthesis; you can modify these lines to use as many variables as you want.
$regexpArray = array(
'SearchArray'=>array(
'/<flv href="([^"]+)" width="([^"]+)" height="([^"]+)" autostart="([^"]+)">/U'
),
'ReplaceArray'=>array(
'<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="$2" height="$3" data="http://yourdomain/flv.swf?file=$1&autostart=$4"><param name="movie" value="http://yourdomain/flv.swf?file=$1&autostart=$4" /></object>'
)
);Now, you can use <flv href="my_flv_file.flv" width="its_width" height="its_height" autostart="true_or_false"> to insert the entire Flash video anywhere in your entry.