PmWiki: Wiki Trails

The Wiki Trails feature allows wiki authors to create “trails” through sequences of pages in the wiki. To do this, an author creates a “trail page” that gives the sequence of page names as either a bullet or numbered list. The page names must be the first item following each bullet. Then, for each page on the trail, add the markup "<<|TrailPage|>>" somewhere on the page (usually at the bottom). This markup will then be replaced with links to the previous and next pages in the trail, as defined by the TrailPage.

As an example, the page PmWiki.Documentation Index defines a Wiki Trail through the set of pages that make up the documentation for Pm Wiki. The special markup

  <<|PmWiki.DocumentationIndex|>>

appears at the bottom of each page along the trail, providing links to the previous and next pages in the trail sequence. Note that this makes reorganizing the sequence of pages or adding new pages quite easy— simply edit the trail page (PmWiki.Documentation Index in this case).

There are a couple of other markups available: ^|TrailPage|^ will show a page’s ancestry to the trail page, while <|TrailPage|> will completely omit the “<PrevPage|” or “|NextPage>” markups at the beginning or end of the trail respectively.

Anchor markup on trail pages

To make use of the [[#anchor]] markup on a trail page, place the anchor on the line preceding the line being referenced. Links to the anchor will still jump to the referenced line. So the following is the correct approach for a trail page:

 [[#anchor]]
 * PageName

If the anchor is placed within the line, the line and associated page will not be included in the trail. So the following is incorrect for trail pages:

 * [[#anchor]]PageName

Also the following doesn’t render a bullet list item at all.

 [[#anchor]] * PageName

Other notes

The %trail% markup used in PmWiki’s documentation pages is actually a Wiki Style defined in the PmWiki.Group Header page, and is not required for Wiki Trails to work.

PmWiki.Documentation Index