Creole is a

lightweight markup language A lightweight markup language (LML), also termed a simple or humane markup language, is a markup language with simple, unobtrusive syntax. It is designed to be easy to write using any generic text editor and easy to read in its raw form. Lightw ...

, aimed at being a common

markup language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

for

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

s, enabling and simplifying the transfer of content between different wiki engines.

History

The idea was conceived during a workshop at the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis. An EBNF grammar and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

interchange format for Creole have also been published. Creole was designed by comparing major wiki engines and using the most common markup for a particular wikitext element. If no commonality was found, the wikitext of the dominant wiki engine

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

was usually chosen. On July 4, 2007, the version 1.0 (final) of Creole was released, and a two-year development freeze was implemented to allow time for authors of wiki engines to adopt the new markup.

Creole syntax examples

Emphasized text:

//emphasized// (e.g., italics)
 
**strongly emphasized** (e.g., bold)

Lists: * Bullet list * Second item ** Sub item # Numbered list # Second item ## Sub item Links: Link to wikipage link text Headings: (closing equals signs are optional)

= Extra-large heading
  Large heading

  Medium heading

  Small heading

Linebreaks:

Force\\linebreak

Horizontal Line:

----

Images:

Tables: , = , = table , = header , , a , table , row , , b , table , row , No markup:

Support in engines

Creole 1.0 is the default syntax in

Bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git-based source code repository hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of private repositories. Services Bitbucket Cloud Bitbucket Cloud (pre ...

wikis, which also support some Creole 1.0 additions. Creole 1.0 is one of the available markup languages for the online educational platform

Moodle Moodle ( ) is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning project ...

and the UML rendering software PlantUML.

References

External links

Creole 1.0 Homepage

Creole 2.0 Discussion Homepage

WikiSym 2006 Workshop: Wiki Markup Standard
(archived web page)
Demonstration of a downloadable JavaScript-powered editing tool for Creole 1.0
{{Wiki topics Lightweight markup languages Wikis 2007 in computing