[[b WikiWriter]] is a writing tool. Text input is much like Notepad, or an HTML editor, with output displayed in a web browser. In other words, what you get is determined by how you write — how you mark up your text. [[b WikiWriter]] uses simplified markup, but allows advanced HTML markup too, making the system easy to learn and use, with power to spare for experienced professional producers.
=== Writing
Once you click on the [[b Edit Page]] button on an [[b WikiWriter]] page to get the editor, you write like you would in any other editor. Type the text you want, select-copy-paste to move things around, select and delete to wipe them out. As in an HTML editor, you add markup to the text to control display formatting, links and insertions. In fact, you can use HTML markup if you're comfortable with that. But unlike an HTML editor, you can use a very simplified markup system which is easy to read and write in the editor, and let WikiWriter handle the behind-the-scenes details.
Your [[b WikiWriter]] pages display in a browser embedded in the program. Since the display is controlled by the source markup and not by the editor, you can use almost any text formatting system you like in the editing box to keep your text entry — indents, extra line spaces, no space after titles — and the browser display will still behave appropriately.
If you really wanted to, you could actually do your editing in an external text editor, like Notepad, TextPad, or UltraEdit, and use [[b WikiWriter]] only for the display and export functions. That might be all right for minor editing adjustments, or for global search-and-replace operations, but the instant display features of [[b WikiWriter]] would be sorely missed.
=== Display Processing
[[b WikiWriter]] handles the display processing by reading the text file requested when you click on a link, converting the markup to HTML, saving the HTML in a temporary display file, and pointing the browser to the file for display. To make changes in the display, click on the [[b Edit]] button, and edit the source text file.
This two-step process makes it possible to add enhancements, modifications, and special features to [[b WikiWriter]] like XHTML compliance or XML output without requiring changes in source files or work methods. Since [[b WikiWriter]] uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for display control, it's easy to change the look of an entire project by adjusting the one CSS file. You can also add features like [[b [[rev _special background treatments_]]]], blocks and boxes for text and graphics by writing the display particulars for a DIV or SPAN into the CSS file and calling the style class with simple [[b WikiWriter]] markup.
