Toolbox

Information

This page offers examples of formatting code for common tasks

Add an Introductory Screenshot and Description

Whenever possible we begin an application's top-level page with this. The code to achieve it is

{|class="tablecenter vertical-centered"
|[[Image:YourScreenshot.png|250px|thumb]]
|Your descriptive text
|}

Format Your Text

Use Headings

Each heading goes on its own line starting and ending with two or more '=' characters. Once there are more than a handful of headings on a page they automatically create a Table of Contents, so use them. The number of '=' characters determines their level in the Table of Contents, thus your headings should be '==Main section name==', '===Subsection name===', '====Sub-subheading name here====', and so on. Avoid using single '=', as that denotes a page heading and every wiki page already has one made from its name; for example, this page's title "Toolbox" appears as its page heading.

Use bold and italic

Blips are used to specify bold and italic words.

Use '''bold text''' to specify bold text and ''italic text'' to specify italic text.

In order to ensure we get easy and accurate translations, please adhere to the typographical guidelines.

Add a Code Snippet

We have templates to assist in correctly displaying code snippets. Examples of use in various situations are available on the typographical guideline page

If you have problems displaying pipe characters in your code snippet, please see the explanation and markup detailed on Typographical Guidelines

Add Indents

":" is used for an indent, and was used in multiples in some old pages. This is deprecated, and causes some problems, so the multiples will be removed as they are found. A single ":" indents by four characters.

Format Dates

Dates in a purely numerical format cause confusion, due to differences in expectations of geographical zones. Please format dates as

18 Mar 2011

with the month either spelled out completely or in abbreviated form, and the year in 4-digit format. The day may be single or double-digit.

Bulleted Lists

* is the symbol to use for bulletted lists. ** gives a second level:

* Almonds

* Nuts
** Cashews

* Raisins

produces

Almonds

Nuts
- Cashews

Raisins

Enumerations

Enumerations are produced in the same way, using '#'.

# Sift
# Mix
## Stir thoroughly
# Bake

produces

Sift
Mix
1. Stir thoroughly
Bake

For more details see wikimedia on lists.

Combining Bulleted Lists and Enumerations

You can have an enumerated sublist in a bulleted list and vice versa, like this:

* Nuts
*# Cashew
*# Crazy
* Other things

produces

Nuts
1. Cashew
2. Crazy
Other things

while

# Nuts
#* Cashew
#* Crazy
# Other things

produces

Nuts
- Cashew
- Crazy
Other things

Note

Enumerations should never have blank lines in them: it breaks the sequence and numbering starts at one again. Similarly, there should never be blank lines before a sublist item whether enumerated or bulleted: it creates two levels of item markings (bullets or numbers)

Note

Please remember, that long lists are a problem for translators. With single level bulleted lists, place each bullet in a section of its own, i.e. make a blank line between bullets. With two levels of bullets the subitems must be kept in the same section as their top level bullet; if you have to use subbullets, please keep the sublists short! With enumerations involved, you must keep everything in one unit. Please try to avoid enumerations, and if you find that you must use them try to keep them short.

Workaround

Though it is important to avoid blank lines in enumerations and nested lists it is still possible to split such lists in several translations units. This is highly recommended!

To get each bullet and each sub bullet in its own translation unit you can enter something like this:

* First bullet </translate >
<translate >
** First sub bullet </translate >
<translate >
** Another sub bullet<br /><br />This one consists of two paragraphs </translate >
<translate >
* The next main bullet </translate >
<translate >
** And so on

This displays like this:

First bullet
- First sub bullet
- Another sub bullet
  
  This one consists of two paragraphs
The next main bullet
- And so on

The same method should apply to the other kinds of lists.

If on the other hand you need to have more sections in the same item, you can do something like this to have each section in a translation unit of its own:

* First bullet </translate >
<translate >
* Second bullet, first section. </translate><br /><br /> <translate > Second section of the
second bullet. This section has a translation unit of its own </translate >
<translate >
* And so on

This displays like this:

First bullet
Second bullet, first section.

Second section of the second bullet. This section has a translation unit of its own
And so on

Itemizations

Itemizations are produced using ; and : alternatively. They are best for giving short descriptions for a group of related objects.

;Animals
: They move around and devour other creatures.

;Plants
: They have roots and feed upon ground water and sun.

produces

Animals: They move around and devour other creatures.

Plants: They have roots and feed upon ground water and sun.

Note

As always, please keep each item in a section of its own; it helps translators a lot.

Add a Link

There are three kinds of links to learn, internal ones, to another userbase page, internal links to a section of a userbase page, and external URL links.

For an internal link the format [[PageLayout]], where you want to display the name of the page, does work, but it is not ideal, particularly for translation to docbook and for localisation. It is better to use the form [[Special:myLanguage/PageLayout|Page Layout]], because that allows translators to link correctly even though the page name is localised. The result is that it directs to the correctly translated page, if one exists. You often need to include the link in a sentence, so in that case you would use

[[Special:myLanguage/PageLayout|this page]]

which displays

this page

Internal links to subsections of a page use character '#' (hash) and should look like this

[[Special:myLanguage/Tasks_and_Tools#Working_with_Languages|...]]

With this kind of link it is very important, that the page you link to declares the reference anchor. If the anchor contains space characters, replace them by character '_' (underscore) when calling the reference. If the reference is found, the section will be automatically displayed by your browser (if it manages anchors). If it is not the case, you will have to go down through the page to find the referenced section. External links are given as the URL and a text separated by a space and delimited by single square brackets as in

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE KDE's Wikipedia page]

which gives KDE's Wikipedia page.

Anchor declaration

Anchor declaration must be done immediatly BEFORE the referenced section, and followed by a blank line separating the anchor and its headline. In the following example just copy in the ID value, the title of associated section. It should look like this:

</translate><span id="Working with Languages"></span> <translate>

If the page containing the section that you link to is not yet marked up for translation, you should omit the </translate > and <translate > tags.

External links are slightly different so

[http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules our road map]

displays

our road map, which would take you straight to the techbase page.

One last thing to note - when you preview your page, all links are live. This gives you two benefits. You can check (by hovering) that your links are set up as you expected, and you can use a red link to create a new page.

Make an application list

If you want to make a list of applications like the ones in the subpages of Applications, you should use the AppItem template. Simply enter

{|
{{AppItem|System Settings/Locale|Preferences-desktop-locale.png|
Settings for localized handling of numbers, dates, etc}}A short text.
A few more short lines about the app. This is optional.
|-
{{AppItem|System Settings/Shortcuts and Gestures|Preferences-desktop-keyboard.png|
Shortcuts and Gestures}}Another short text. If you do not type <keycap>Enter</keycap> between the texts
you get one section no matter how long the text is.
|}

This gives the following display:

Settings for localized handling of numbers, dates, etc
	A short text. A few more short lines about the app. This is optional.
Shortcuts and Gestures
	Another short text. If you do not type Enter between the texts you get one section no matter how long the text is.

Note, that you should not prepend "Special:myLanguage" to the page name - the template takes care of that. Also note, that you must give a title, even if the title is the same as the page name.

Footnotes

Footnotes are rarely used in our pages, but if you need them you can place a <ref>text</ref> in the source where the footnote mark should appear. There has to be one <references /> somewhere in the source as well, usually towards the end of the page. This is where the text added by the <ref> tags will appear. For more info see the Wikipedia help page.

Illustrate Your Text

Add a single image, centered

[[File:KMail-kde4.png|250px|center]]

Note that you can change the position of the image, but the default is left. The size of the image depends on the circumstances, but for screenshots I recommend no less than 250px and no more than 500px.

Also note that Image: and File: are synonyms. So that [[Image:KMail-kde4.png]] is the same as [[File:KMail-kde4.png]]. However Image: is deprecated, so prefer File: in new content.

see mediawiki for more info.

Make the Image Clickable and Add a Caption

Where you need to show more detail, create a moderately sized image, clickable, so that the full-size can be seen. Simply add the parameter '|thumb' within the image parentheses.

A caption can also be added as a parameter, but will only show if '|thumb' is present.

Example:

[[File:file_name.png|thumb|this will be the caption]]

Add a caption without a thumbnail

Captions also appear on images marked up with the frame syntax.

Example:

[[File:image.png|frame|left|this will be the caption]]

Prevent text from flowing around image

Sometimes you might not want the text to flow down the sides of your image. You can prevent this by adding a <br clear=all> tag between the file tag and the text in question.

Example:

[[File:image.png]]
<br clear=all>
This text would normally flow down the sides of the image but now it will be found under the image

Use Tables to Precisely Place Multiple Images

{|class="tablecenter" style="border: 1px solid grey;"
|[[Image:Desktop-config-customized.png|230px|center]]||[[Image:Desktop-settings-rightclick.png|230px|center]]
|-
|[[Image:Desktop-theme-details-dialog.png|230px|center]]||[[Image:Plasma-multiple-themes.png|230px|center]]
|}

displays

Note that all the parameters for one image are contained within [[...]], and cells are separated by '||'. To start a new line, insert '|-' on an otherwise-empty line, then '|' at the start of the next one.

For more details on Table formating see mediawiki

Embed a Video

As of July 2012 the MediaWiki EmbedVideo extension has been installed on userbase.kde. This means you can embed videos from various video hosting sites into the page content and have them display in line.

EmbedVideo parser function expects to be called in any of the following ways:

{{#ev:service|id}}
{{#ev:service|id|width}}
{{#ev:service|id|width|align}}
{{#ev:service|id|width|align|desc}}
{{#evp:service|id|desc}}
{{#evp:service|id|desc|align}}
{{#evp:service|id|desc|align|width}}

Where:

service is the name of a video sharing service (See "service name" in the list below)
id is the id of the video to include
width (optional) is the width in pixels of the viewing area (height will be determined automatically)
align (optional) is an alignment (float) attribute. May be "left" or "right".
desc (optional) is a short description to display beneath the video when it is aligned

For example, to include the famous "evolution of dance" YouTube video, you'd enter:

{{#ev:youtube|dMH0bHeiRNg}}

And if you wanted scaled down to thumbnail size, on the right with a short description, you could use:

{{#ev:youtube|dMH0bHeiRNg|100|right|This is an embedded video!}}

As of version 1.0, EmbedVideo supports embedding video content from the following services:

Site	Service Name
Dailymotion	`dailymotion`
Div Share	`divshare`
Edutopia	`edutopia`
FunnyOrDie	`funnyordie`
Google Video	`googlevideo`
Interia	`interia` or `interiavideo`
Revver	`revver`
sevenload	`sevenload`
TeacherTube	`teachertube`
YouTube	`youtube` and `youtubehd`
Vimeo	`vimeo`

Add Notes and Warnings

Important

Indented boxes do not display correctly! Never put a colon in front of a box; it will make the box look very odd.

Where a note or warning is relevant within your text, use these templates:

{{Info|This is general information}} displays

Information

This is general information

{{Note|Some important information at this point}} displays

Note

Some important information at this point

{{Tip|A helpful piece of advice, something to remember}}displays

Tip

A helpful piece of advice, something to remember

{{Warning|Take care - this is a dangerous thing to do}} displays

Warning

Take care - this is a dangerous thing to do

Where the strongest possible warning is needed, the Remember box can be used, but please use sparingly. {{Remember|1=This is for things that definitely must not be forgotten}}

Remember

This is for things that definitely must not be forgotten

You can also change the heading:

Don't Forget This!

You can use parameter number 2 to set an individual box heading:

{{Remember|2=Don't Forget This!|1=You can use...}}

Page Redirection

You can make a page to redirect to another page automatically by using:

#REDIRECT [[Pagename]]

KDE3 and KDE SC 4 Versions of Applications

By default, KDE SC 4 is assumed. If the KDE SC 4 version is not yet ready for release, or where only a KDE 3 version exists, it may be necessary to document the KDE3 version. In this case you should add the template {{KDE3}} which displays Should you be writing about a KDE3 version and KDE SC 4 version on the same page, use icons for both — {{KDE4}} which displays

Other Useful Templates

Inserting GUI Icons

The best way to refer to icons in the GUI is to display it in the text. This can be done with a template like this: {{Icon|list-add}}. This will display the icon.

For this to work, the icon image must have been uploaded to the wiki. See Update an Image for an explanation on how to upload images. The .png files can usually be found here: usr/share/icons/oxygen. If possible use the 16x16 icon. The file name should have an Icon- prefix as in Icon-list-add.png — apart from the prefix the filename should exactly match the usual name. Note, that when using the template you should neither write the Icon- prefix nor the .png file type extension.

The icon can also be written as {{Plus}}, and the icon as {{Minus}}. You can also use {{Configure}} to get the icon, and {{Exit}} gets you the icon.

Community Applications

The final consideration concerns those applications which are not distributed as core KDE applications. These need to be indicated by an icon, placing {{Community-app}}

See footnote

at the end of your sentence or line, just as you would to denote a footnote in general writing. You then need to add {{Community-app-footnote}} which will create a footnote, like this:

Support for this application can be found from the project's home page

Making Major Edits to Existing Pages

If a page is likely to be open for editing for some time there is a danger of conflicts - someone else may edit at the same time, and saving your edit will cancel out theirs, or vice versa. The way to avoid that is to make a temporary entry, directly under the language bar, using {{Being_Edited}} which will display

Currently Being Edited

This page is currently being edited.
If this notice persists for an unreasonable time, please either notify irc.freenode.org #kde-www or report on Claus chr's Talk page

Note: Pages should not normally be marked for translation while they are being actively worked on

Don't forget to remove it when you have finished!

Adding a New Complex Page

If you need to be able to work on a page for quite some time, over several days, for instance, you may like to use the Construction template - {{Construction}}, which displays

Under Construction

This is a new page, currently under construction!

Links to Pages in the Neighbourhood

You can add links to a preceding or a following page using the {{Prevnext2}} template…

{{Prevnext2
 | prevpage  = Previous Pagename
 | nextpage  = Following Pagename
 | prevtext  = The page before this one
 | nexttext  = The next page you should read
 | index     = Index page
 | indextext = Back to Menu
}}

…to produce helpful navigation links of the form…

All six arguments are optional, but keep in mind that if you don't specify a value for the indexname parameter, the untranslated name of the current page will be displayed. For the first and last pages in a series, the template is most often used like this:

First page

Last page

{{Prevnext2
 | nextpage  = Following Pagename
 | nexttext  = Read this page next
 | indextext = Tasks and Tools
}}

{{Prevnext2
 | prevpage  = Previous Pagename
 | prevtext  = The page before this one
 | indextext = Tasks and Tools
}}

🡻 Output 🡻

Note

You should always specify link text (use piped links) for the pages you link to, and you should always prefix your wikilink targets (the part before the |) with Special:myLanguage/ lest you create problems for the translators.

Links to bugs

You can link directly to a bug in Bugzilla by using this template:

{{Bug|123456}}

Please do not forget to add the <s> and </s> to strike through a bug that is closed.

Adding a List of Sub-Pages

== Subpages of {{FULLPAGENAME}} ==
{{Special:PrefixIndex/{{FULLPAGENAME}}/}}

is very useful when you want to list subpages with active links, such as

Subpages of Toolbox

It does, however, also list all "other-language" pages, so use with discretion.