A powerful formatting language developed specifically for this application allows you to format your posts easily. This allows you to add, for example, bold or italic words or phrases to your postings. There's absolutely no need to apply any formatting to your messages if you don't wish to: they'll simply appear as text. If however, you would like to, this page gives notes on how to do so. There are examples after each major section.

Contents

Introduction to formatting

All formatting tags have the following structure:
\code{Arguments or text to be formatted}

The code is a keyword to invoke the desired formatting (for example, green to produce green text and b to produce bold text). Formatting tags are case sensitive.

To use formatting, enter the appropriate code(s) in the text of your message or subject line. When you preview your post, your formatting will be displayed so you can verify that you have entered your tags properly.

• Simple features (bold, italics, etc.)
• Colours
• Miscellaneous

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Simple Features

Tag	Description	Example
\b{Your Text}	Bold Text	Your Text
\i{Your Text}	Italics Text	Your Text
\+{Your Text}	Superscript Text	[Reference]Your Text
\-{Your Text}	Subscript Text	[Reference]Your Text
\fixed{Your Text}	Fixed Width Text	Your Text
\u{Your Text}	Underlined Text	Your Text
\c{Your Text}	Centered Text	Your Text





Examples

Input:		\b{Show me some bold} and \i{italics text}.
Output:		Show me some bold and italics text.
Input:		H\-{2}O has a density of 1.000x10\+{-3} kg/mL.
Output:		H2O has a density of 1.000x10-3 kg/mL.

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Colors

Tag	Description	Example
\red{Your Text}	Red Text	Your Text
\orange{Your Text}	Orange Text	Your Text
\yellow{Your Text}	Yellow Text	Your Text
\green{Your Text}	Green Text	Your Text
\cyan{Your Text}	Cyan Text	Your Text
\blue{Your Text}	Blue Text	Your Text
\purple{Your Text}	Purple Text	Your Text
\white{Your Text}	White Text	Your Text
\gray{Your Text}	Gray Text	Your Text
\black{Your Text}	Black Text	Your Text





Example

Input:		\red{Red} and \green{green} are pretty colors.
Output:		Red and green are pretty colors.

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Miscellaneous

Tag	Description	Example
\greek{Your Text}	Greek (symbol) text	Your Text
\strike{Your Text}	Strikethrough	Your Text
\char{ASCII code}	Character (0-255)	Ê (ASCII code=202)
\indent{Your text}	Indented (blockquoted)	Your text
\quote{Your text}	Quoted	Quote: Your text

Special characters

Modern browsers support the display of special characters, such as the "degrees" symbol (°). There are a number of available characters.

Tag	Result		Tag	Result
\ch{->}	®		\ch{<-}	¬
\ch{/ |}	­		\ch{\ /}	¯
\ch{t}	†		\ch{tt}	‡
\ch{dot}	•		\ch{TM}	™
\ch{c}	©		\ch{<<}	«
\ch{R}	®		\ch{deg}	°
\ch{+-}	±		\ch{=/=}	¹
\ch{<>}	¹		\ch{int}	ò
\ch{:)}	J		\ch{:(}	L
\ch{:|}	K		\ch{mu}	µ
\ch{1/2}	½		\ch{>>}	»
\ch{A}	Å		\ch{/}	÷
\ch{nullset}	Ø		\ch{forall}	"
\ch{<=}	£		\ch{>=}	³
\ch{<->}	«		\ch{inf}	¥
\ch{= =}	º		\ch{del}	¶
\ch{DEL}	Ñ		\ch{=>}	Þ
\ch{therefore}	\		\ch{line}
\ch{br}	<BR> (HTML)		\ch{nbsp}	&nbsp; (HTML)

The "Symbol" font, supported on Windows platforms, allows the incorporation of Greek characters which is especially useful for mathematical notation in many scientific disciplines. The following table gives available Greek characters in groups of 5.

Tag	Result		Tag	Result
\greek{abcde}	abcde		\greek{ABCDE}	ABCDE
\greek{fghij}	fghij		\greek{FGHIJ}	FGHIJ
\greek{klmno}	klmno		\greek{KLMNO}	KLMNO
\greek{pqrst}	pqrst		\greek{PQRST}	PQRST
\greek{uvwxyz}	uvwxyz		\greek{UVWXYZ}	UVWXYZ

Backslashes, and curly braces have special meanings to the program. If you wish to use these characters as text within a tag, you must "escape" them as with a backslash. Additionally, when you are using a tag that requires 2 or more arguments and you want to include a comma within the arguments (and not have it interpreted as a separator), you must escape it with a backslash. See the examples.

Code	Result
\\	\
\{	{
\}	}
\,	,

Examples

Input:		This program is \ch{c} 1997
Output:		This program is © 1997.
Input:		\b{No need, to escape, these commas} in a tag that takes only one argument.
Output:		No need, to escape, these commas in a tag that takes only one argument.
Input:		\rgb{0000aa,No need, to escape, these commas} in the last field of a tag.
Output:		No need, to escape, these commas in the last field of a tag.
Input:		\font{Times\,Roman\,Arial,You need to escape the first two commas in this case}.
Output:		You need to escape the first two commas in this case.

• Mathematical notation
• Hyperlinks
• Tables and Lists

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Mathematical Notation

Tag	Description	Example Tag	Output
\sum{lower, upper}	Sum using sigma notation	\sum{i=1,10} i	Si=110 i
\int{lower, upper}	Definite Integral	\int{0,6} x dx	ò06 x dx

Example

Input:		\int{0,2\greek{p}} sin(x) dx = 0
Output:		ò02p sin(x) dx = 0

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Hyperlinks

Code	Description
\newurl{URL, text description}	Link to URL in new window with text description
\mail{address, text description}	"mailto" link to email address with text description

Example

Input:		To learn more about \green{Nursing the Future}, visit the \newurl{http://www.nursingthefuture.org.uk,Nursing the Future home page}.
Output:		To learn more about Nursing the Future, visit the Nursing the Future home page.

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Tables and Lists

You can hand-enter tables or you can paste in tables directly from a tab-delimited spreadsheet (such as Microsoft Excel). See the "Pasting Tables" instructions if you are pasting a table directly from Excel.



Tag	Description
\table{Table Items}	Creates a table of the Table Items (table HAS a border)
\tablenb{Table Items}	Creates a table of the Table Items (table has NO border)
\list{List Items}	Creates a bulleted list of the List Items
\olist{List Items}	Creates an ordered (numbered list of the List Items)

Table Items and List Items

The Table Items are divided into columns by commas and into rows by newline characters (carriage returns). Thus, the entry \table{1,2,3} would create a table with three columns (with entries "1", "2", and "3").

The List Items are separated by newline characters (carriage returns). Each List Item is given a bullet.

See the examples for further explanation.

Pasting Tables

You can paste in tables from tab-delimited spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel. To paste a table, do the following:
• Open your spreadsheet using Excel.
• Select the range that you wish to paste as a table using Excel.
• Choose Edit and then Copy.
• Bring up your WWW browser.
• Enter an "empty" table tag (such as \table{ } or \tablenb{ }) in your message. Do not put in any Table Items at this time.
• Click the mouse between the curly braces in that tag.
• Select Edit and then Paste.

Examples

Input:		\table{X,O,X O,X O,,X}
Output:		X O X O X O X
Input:		\list{List Item 1 List Item 2 List Item 3}
Output:		List Item 1 List Item 2 List Item 3
Input:		\table{1,2\ch{br}2.5,3 4,\ch{nbsp},6 7,8,9\,000}
Output:		1 2 2.5 3 4   6 7 8 9,000

• Not looking at the preview
The message preview shows your tags in action. If you look at it and your \b{Bold text} isn't bold, you have made a mistake!
• Using / instead of \ to start a tag
• /b{Bold text tag} is wrong
• \b{Bold text tag} is correct
• Using parentheses instead of curly braces
• \b(Bold text tag) is wrong
• \b{Bold text tag} is correct
• Using the wrong case in tags
• \B{Bold text tag} is wrong (\B{ } is not defined)
• \b{Bold text tag} is correct
• Not escaping commas where necessary
• Advanced tags use the comma to separate the various arguments. If you need to use a comma and not have it treated as a delimiter, you must escape the comma.
• See the discussion under "Special Characters" for further explanation and many examples.
• Putting spaces where they do not belong
• \ b{Bold text tag} is wrong (space between \ and b).
• \b {Bold text tag} is wrong (space between b and {).
• \b{Bold text tag} is correct.