Solowiki Editor Manual

Table of contents

About

SoloWiki Editor is a free software (see license) developed by Giuseppe Profiti.

SoloWiki Editor (C) 2008-2010, Giuseppe Profiti

If you want to contact me for suggestions, feature request, bug submission or only to say "thanks", feel free to use the forums and other tools provided in the SoloWiki project page on Sourceforge. You can also send me an email at gamma2@users.sourceforge.net

This tool was a gift for Erica, to whom I dedicate this software.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

Parsing is done thanks to Java Wikipedia Api, which is (C) Axel C. Kramer and it is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.

StringUtils class is (C) Giuseppe Profiti and it is released under the MIT License..

Swing Layout Extensions library, used for Java 1.5 compatibility, is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Icons come from the Java look and feel Graphics Repository , (C) 2000 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

TeX parsing and image generation is made via JMathTeX library, which is (C) 2004-2007 Universiteit Gent and it is released under the GNU General Public License.

Installation

Java 5 or newer is mandatory to run the software.

After downloading the software you get a compressed file. To install Solowiki Editor you must decompress the file in a folder. This folder will be the application folder. You don't need to do anything else: everything required by Solowiki Editor will stay in in the selected folder.

Uninstalling

To uninstall SoloWiki editor, just remove the folder where you extracted the files. I'll be glad to receive an e-mail from you, containing your opinions, why you don't like the software and what can be improved.

Starting the editor

In order to start the editor you can double click on the file solowiki.jar or type the following command in a console:

java -jar solowiki.jar

The main window

The main window is composed by the main menu, the toolbar, the editing tab, the output tab and the status bar.
Not all the features are available from both the toolbar and the menu.

The output can be viewed as rendered HTML (looking like how you can see it in your web browser) or in plain text displaying the HTML tags. This option can be switched from the Actions->Show full HTML menu.

The toolbar

In the toolbar, from left to right, you will see the buttons:

Editing features

Mediawiki formatting

Text can be formatted using both the Style menu and the toolbar buttons. If nothing is selected, the editor will add the requested formatting at the cursor position.
If something is selected, the editor will surround the selection with the requested markup.

Common markup

Bold, italics, template, h2 and h3 behave like Mediawiki embedded editor: equals, braces and other markup symbols will surround the selection.
Underline adds HTML u tag before and after the selection. Nowiki surrounds the selection with <nowiki>. H2 and h3 will add 2 and 3 equal signs (=) respectively.

Add image

Add image lets you choose a file from your local filesystem, the image will be added to the text as [[FILE:filename]] (where FILE is the tag set in the options menu). As example, if you choose the file mydog.jpg from any folder in you filesystem, the program will add [[File:mydog.jpg]] to the text.
While saving the generated HTML, the link will point to the absolute file path if the file is not stored in a subdirectory of the HTML destination directory, otherwise the link will point to the relative file path.
Check the known issues section for more information about file management.

Format image link

Format image link (Img) surrounds the selected text like that: [[FILE:selection|thumb|200px|]]. As example, if you select the text mycat.jpg and use Format image link, the text will become [[File:mycat.jpg|thumb|200px|]]. Check the known issues section for more information about known bugs.

How to create a preview

After you have typed or loaded the text, the preview can be created by pressing ALT+SPACE, via the menu Actions->Generate preview or pressing the button on the toolbar.
The preview will be visible in the output tab. Moving the mouse pointer over a link will show the destination link in the status bar, i.e. if you type [[somewhere|text]]  the link text will be visible in the output tab and the string somewhere will appear in the status bar.

Saving the text

You can save the text containing the Mediawiki syntax and the generated HTML. File->Save and File->Save as... and the relative buttons in the toolbar refer to the plain text. If you don't specify a file extension, the editor will add .txt by itself.
File->Export as HTML will recreate the HTML text and save it. If you create a preview, modify the text and save the HTML, the modified version will be saved.
An image reference will be relative to the destination path if the image is stored in the destination directory or its subdirectory, otherwise the absolute path will be used. TeX images are stored in the system temporary directory until the HTML page is saved, then the TeX images will be stored in a subdirectory of the destination directory.

Undo and redo

You can undo and redo edits made since the last save. Each character typed or deleted counts as one edit. Text formatting added using the buttons (i.e. == ==, {{ }} and so on) is treated as a single edit.

TeX formulas

TeX can be embedded using the <math> tag. However the library currently used by Solowiki Editor does not support the full syntax of TeX. See the Known issues section for more informations about missing features.

Online features

The online features are disabled by default. You can enable it by using the menu Actions->Online actions.

Downloading a page

Instead of typing the text or opening a local file, you can download the text from a remote website using File->Open from website.... You can type the article name in a dialog window, then the main window will be shown. Be warned: the actual download will take place in the background, so you have to wait until a message in the status bar says that the article has been completely downloaded even if the main window responds to your inputs.

Checking links

After the preview has been generated you can verify if the links point to actual pages on the remote website. This feature can be accessed by a button on the toolbar. After clicking the button a new window will open, that window contains a table: each row refers to a link. The first column displays the page name and the second column contains a checkbox: an empty checkbox means that the page does not exist on the remote website. The rows can be ordered by page name or link status, both ascending and descending, by clicking on the column title.

Options

View options

You can change the font size in the editor using the View menu.

Website options

From Edit->Options you can access a window where you can set URLs and keywords used in the Mediawiki website of your choice.
For English, Italian and some other languages, the options are set on the Wikipedia language equal to your locale by default.
If you want to use a different website for link checking and article download, you have to type the appropriate values on the table. Remember to hit ENTER after setting a value.
Settings can be saved to and loaded from file using the embedded File menu.

Known issues and planned improvements