Wiki Pictures

Twic I supports a simple but flexible picture mechanism. The two key things you need to know are that pictures are block-level things (like paragraphs, lists and headings), and that you get them by waving square brackets around.

The simplest way to do a picture is just to wrap a URL to an image on the web in square brackets, like [http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/exhibits/pdaa.gif], which looks like this:

That may be all you need to know. If you want to find out how deep the rabbit-hole goes, read on. Incidentally, there is a reason for 'Per Dementia Ad Astra'.

The above form of Wiki Picture is in fact a base, degenerate thing. The true form is more complex: the first thing inside the brackets is an image type (which may be blank), followed by a space (or any other linear whitespace), followed by the body of the picture. The type governs how the body is interpreted; a blank type are treated as "img". It actually doesn't matter if you leave the trailing square bracket off, but neatest not to.

The major type available at present is "img", where the body is taken as a URL to a web image, possibly followed by some alt text (separated from the URL by whitespace). This admits to several variations on the theme above (look at the page source to see the details):

You can also do Ascii Art, using the type 'ascii' (that's Bob of the Sub Genius, in negative, in case you can't tell):

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@@@@@            ~ ~~ ~I          @@@@@
@@@@'                  '  _,w@<    @@@@
@@@@     @@@@@@@@w___,w@@@@@@@@  @  @@@
@@@@     @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@  I  @@@
@@@@     @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@*@[ i  @@@
@@@@     @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@[][ | ]@@@
@@@@     ~_,,_ ~@@@@@@@~ ____~ @    @@@
@@@@    _~ ,  ,  `@@@~  _  _`@ ]L  J@@@
@@@@  , @@w@ww+   @@@ww``,,@w@ ][  @@@@
@@@@,  @@@@www@@@ @@@@@@@ww@@@@@[  @@@@
@@@@@_|| @@@@@@P' @@P@@@@@@@@@@@[|c@@@@
@@@@@@w| '@@P~  P]@@@-~, ~Y@@^'],@@@@@@
@@@@@@@[   _        _J@@Tk     ]]@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@,@ @@, c,,,,,,,y ,w@@[ ,@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@ i @w   ====--_@@@@@  @@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@`,P~ _ ~^^^^Y@@@@@  @@@@@@@@@
@@@@^^=^@@^   ^' ,ww,w@@@@@ _@@@@@@@@@@
@@@_xJ~ ~   ,    @@@@@@@P~_@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@   @,   ,@@@,_____   _,J@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@L  `' ,@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Future types may include Troff Pic, Post Script, Te X, Troff Grap, SVG and Lo Go. These will probably require some work on the Wiki Pictures Implementation.

Category Wiki