Manuel Amago: WikiTrails

The WikiTrails feature allows wiki authors to create "trails" through sequences of pages in the wiki. You simply specify pages and their order on a "trail index", and then place the navigation markup on the pages that you will be navigating.

(Don't confuse the pagelist directive with WikiTrails - they are different animals as explained in the Q and A below.)

Trail types

PmWiki defines 2 trail markups, specifying a trail index link:

• <<|[[Trail Index Page]]|>> displays as "<< PreviousPage | Trail Index Page | NextPage >>".
• <|[[Trail Index Page]]|> displays as "< PreviousPage | Trail Index Page | NextPage >", except the appropriate arrow is omitted at the beginning and end of the trail.

and for a trail path:

• ^|[[TrailIndexPage]]|^

Markup is most often added to a group header or group footer.

Trail index page link markup

The trail index page link has the same markup as a standard link, this means for example you can specify:

• <|[[TrailIndexPage | +]]|>
• <<|[[TrailIndexPage | A description]]|>>

Trail index page links can be restricted by anchors (links to a specific location within a page), this means you can have more than one trail on a page, or start a trail from a specific location in a page.

• <|[[Trail Index Page(#trailstart#trailend)]]|>

Creating a trail

Before you can use a trail through a set of pages, you have to create a "trail index" on a separate page, which we will call the "trail index page". On that trail index page, you simply create a numbered, bulleted, or definition list of links. (So every numbered or bulleted list of links implicitly creates a trail.)

It is important that each page name (link) be the first item following each bullet; any text or formatting in front of the page name link will exclude it from the trail.
If you want to format your trail (list), you can include a CSS.

An example trail index page might contain the list:

• Installation how to install
• The customisation page
• PmWiki some other text PmWiki Philosophy (The latter won't be in the trail because it is preceded by text)
• Yet some other text. PmWiki.WikiStyles (This won't be in the trail because it follows text)
• Uploads (This won't be in the trail because it is preceded by the %center% style.)
• Some text (This won't be in the trail because it is not a link)
• PageLists Listing pages by multiple criteria with templated output
• http://pmwiki.org (This won't be in the trail because it is not a page link)
  • PmWiki:InterMap (This won't be in the trail because it is an InterMap link)
• Cookbook:Cookbook (This won't be in the trail because it is an InterMap link)

PmWiki philosophy

Design notes (The first link in this definition list will, and the second link won't, be in the trail defined by (definition list))

• Security (This won't be in the trail because its preceded by a (hidden) anchor)
• Links (This won't be in the trail because its preceded by a (hidden) %newwin% style)
• Troubleshooting (This won't be in the trail because its preceded by (hidden) italic style markup)

The list above creates the following "wikitrail", displayed using a pagelist:

Observations

1. In general, indentation levels in the page list don't matter — trails are a linear sequence of pages.
2. A page is part of the trail only if the page link immediately follows the list markup.
3. The list itself can be delineated by the use of anchors, allowing for multiple lists on a page, or for some list items to be excluded.

Using the trail

What makes a trail "work" is adding trail markup on the pages in the trail (i.e. the pages that are listed in the bullet/numbered list on the trail index page).

To build a trail, add trail markup like <<|[[TrailIndexPage]]|>> to a page, where TrailIndexPage is the page, described above, containing the bulleted list of pages in the trail. PmWiki will display the trail markup with links to any previous and next pages in the trail.

The trail markup can be placed anywhere in a group header or footer, or on a page. A page can contain multiple trail markups. If you are adding a trail to every page in a group, consider setting the trail markup in the Group Header or Group Footer pages instead of on every individual page in your group.

Path trail

^|[[TrailIndexPage]]|^ treats the list levels as a hierarchy and displays the "path" to reach the current page (i.e., a "breadcrumb" trail). In the example trail above, the markup ^|TrailIndexPage|^ on TrailPage4 would display as "TrailIndexPage | TrailPage2 | TrailPage4". and for a trail path

Wiki administrators can change the trail separator of the "path" trail ( ^|[[TrailIndexPage]]|^ ) from the default | by setting the variable $TrailPathSep in the config.php file. For instance $TrailPathSep = ' > '; will output "TrailIndexPage > TrailPage2 > TrailPage4".

Circular trails

Typically, a trail is a linear list with a first and a last page. However, the trail can be made "circular" by repeating the first page as the last item in the trail index:

 * [[TrailPage1]]
 * [[TrailPage2]]
 ...
 * [[TrailPageN]]
 * [[TrailPage1]]

If the trail index page is intended to be read by others, the last item can be made invisible inside an (:if false:) block:

 * [[TrailPage1]]
 * [[TrailPage2]]
 ...
 * [[TrailPageN]]
 (:if false:)
 * [[TrailPage1]]
 (:ifend:)

Cross Group Trails

Before version 2.2.1, if your trail contains pages in different groups, it should use full [[Group.Name]] links instead of just [[Name]].

Other notes

• There is no space between <| and [[link]] and |>; same for the other trail markups.
• Note that non-existing pages will appear in the WikiTrail? as links.
• Conditional markup supports the ontrail query.
• Page lists provides the trail= parameter.

Trail style

PmWiki encapsulates the trail with a wikitrail css class. This allows the wiki trail to be customised by defining CSS for the wikitrail in the local.css file.

Trail in page lists

Trails from a single page can only be displayed using the pagelist trail parameter. For example

A simple example of a WikiTrail?

1) On the TrailIndexPage?:

* [[MyTrailPage1]]
* [[MyTrailPage2]]
* [[MyTrailPage3]]

2) On the pages MyTrailPage1?, 2, and 3:

<<|[[TrailIndexPage]]|>>

Questions