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. Lightwei ...

, aimed at being a common

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

for

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

s, enabling and simplifying the transfer of content between different

wiki engine Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

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 arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

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 a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...

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. Although development to the standard itself is frozen, discussion in the developer community regarding good practices in wiki markup design and about possible additions and changes for future Creole versions continues. As of 2012, adoption of Creole is limited. Many wiki systems offer it as an option, but few use it by default and few wiki websites enable this optional feature.

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 (previ ...

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 projects in s ...

, and the

UML The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

rendering software

PlantUML PlantUML is an open-source tool allowing users to create diagrams from a plain text language. Besides various UML diagrams, PlantUML has support for various other software development related formats (such as Archimate, Block diagram, BPMN, C4, ...

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