Linking Reference

There are two fundamental linking types on MoinMoin.

• Brackets ([[  ]]) are used to link to a target (a local wiki page, an external URL, a file, etc).

• Braces ({{  }}) are used to embed (transclude/include/show) some target (often an image, but can be text).

Targets are very flexible in that they support virtually any style you can with regular HTML (relative or absolute paths, anchors, etc).

Linking

Properly-formed URLs (i.e. http://example.net), InterWiki pages, email addresses, and CamelCase pagenames are automatically recognized as targets even without using brackets.

Embedding

Embedding/Transclusion is used if you want to include an external file within your wiki. Most commonly, this will be a graphic. But it can also be a text file or any other file that the wiki understands, including video. Additional options can be combined (for example, you can provide link for downloading and display the contents of that file on the page!).

See also HelpOnImages for examples.

Explanations

URLs

If you enter URLs into normal text, there is the problem of detecting what belongs to the URL and what not. There are four ways to force the ending of an URL:

• put a space after the URL,

• use the SixSingleQuotes escaping,

• use the double bracketed URL syntax.

The supported URL schemes are: http, https, ftp, file and some others. The administrator of your wiki can extend the supported schemes by using the url_schemas variable (see HelpOnConfiguration).

In addition to the standard schemes, there are MoinMoin-specific ones: attachment and drawing, these are related to file attachments and are explained on HelpOnActions/AttachFile.

Spaces

You can use double-brackets (or double-braces) syntax to link to a page or file name with spaces. This will even work for interwiki links, provided the target wiki understands standard url quoting (spaces will become %20).

However, best practice is to try to avoid spaces in URLs, as you may find it's more difficult to work with that URL. For example, if you try copying and emailing that URL link, the receiver may have difficulty landing on the page you specified.

Anchors

To insert anchors into a page you need the Anchor macro (see HelpOnMacros): <<Anchor(anchorname)>>, where "anchorname" is the actual identifier of the anchor.

To link to an anchor on the same wiki page use [[#anchorname]] or [[#anchorname|label text]].

To link to an anchor on another wiki page write [[PageName#anchorname]] or [[PageName#anchorname|label text]], where "PageName" is the name of the other page and "anchorname" is the identifier of the anchor on that page.

Preventing Automatically Generated Links

To keep a word like PageName from automatically being turned into a link, you can suppress CamelCase linking by putting an exclamation mark (!) before the word, i.e. !PageName. This method will not interfere with most searches (the exception is certain quoted phrases and regular expressions).

Alternatively, you can insert two back-ticks Page``Name. However, the problem with doing this is that it will prevent a simple search for the word "PageName" from matching Page``Name in a page, due to the inserted characters.

To prevent automatic URL linking, use either `http://...` or {{{http://...}}}.

Using link parameters

Sometimes you may want to give additional parameters for a link, influencing how it looks like, how it behaves and how exactly it links to the target - this is what the params part of [[target|text|params]] is for.

e.g. if you want a direct download link you want to enter as param &do=get [[attachment:HelpOnImages/pineapple.jpg|a pineapple|&do=get]] a pineapple

Setting attributes of the <a> tag

Available attributes: class, title, target, accesskey (see some html reference if you want to know what they mean).

Example: [[http://moinmo.in/|MoinMoin Wiki|class=green dotted,accesskey=1]]

Renders as: MoinMoin Wiki

Pressing the access key should jump to that link target (for Firefox 2.x and the example above it is Alt-Shift-1).

Creating a query string for the target URL

What is possible for this depends on the target site.

Example: [[MoinMoin:MoinMoinWiki|MoinMoin Wiki|&action=diff,&rev1=1,&rev2=2]]

Renders as: MoinMoin Wiki

Please remember:

• If you want to give a key=value item for the query string, don't forget the ampersand (&).

• Giving query string items does not work when you give a URL as target (but for links to pages or attachments).
• If you give a URL as target, you can include a query string directly in that target, no need for params.
• You don't need to encode and url_quote the query string stuff, moin does this automatically for you.

Images

You may use

{{attachment:imagefile.png|text describing image|width=100}}

to have the attached file imagefile.png displayed with a width of 100px; the graphics' height will be reduced/ enlarged proportionally (e.g. if imagefile.png was actually 200px width and 400px heigh, height would be reduced in this example to 200px). You may also use

{{attachment:imagefile.png|text describing image|height=100}}

to have the attached file imagefile.png displayed with a height of 100px, and the graphics' width will be reduced/ enlarged proportionally. Use

{{attachment:imagefile.png|text describing image|width=100 height=150}}

to have the attached file imagefile.png displayed with a width of 100px and a height of 150px. Please do not omit the alternative text in neither case.

Note this does not alter the attached file itself, in only makes the browser scale the image down/ up to the value given while displaying it.

Thumbnails

You may combine the transclusion with the linking syntax, leading to an image displayed in reduced size that links to itself in actual size, e.g.

[[attachment:imagefile.png|{{attachment:imagefile.png|text describing image|width=100}}]]