This manual is for emacs-wiki version 2.72.
For a list of the copyright holders, Contributors
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
--- The Detailed Node Listing ---
Installation
Markup Rules
Encryption
This document describes emacs-wiki, which was written by John Wiegley and is now maintained by Michael Olson.
This document is a work in progress, and your contribution will be greatly appreciated. Please email comments and suggestions to the maintainer, Michael Olson [email protected] .
emacs-wiki enables you to create and use hyperlinks and simple formatting in plain text files, and to optionally publish your pages as HTML.
The 2.71 release of emacs-wiki will probably be its last release, since Emacs Muse does the same things in a better way, with only some little-used functionality remaining to be ported. When the 3.03 release of Emacs Muse comes out, it will be considered a complete replacement for emacs-wiki.
Damien Elmes handed EmacsWikiMode to Mark Triggs for a short period of time. Mark Triggs deferred to Sacha Chua as official maintainer of PlannerMode. Sacha Chua volunteered to maintain RememberMode. Michael Olson became the maintainer of EmacsWikiMode later that year.
Sacha Chua volunteered to maintain PlannerMode. Damien Elmes volunteered to maintain EmacsWikiMode.
John Wiegley wrote EmacsWikiMode and PlannerMode.
Choose to install a release if you want to minimize risk.
Errors are corrected in development first. Once fixes are confirmed, a new release will be made. User-visible changes will be announced on the [email protected] mailing list. see Getting Help and Reporting Bugs.
Debian users can get emacs-wiki via apt-get. The version of emacs-wiki in the Debian stable archive is not recommended, since it is so old. emacs-wiki is available in the Sarge and Sid distributions: apt-get install emacs-wiki .
You can also install the source distribution.
;; Add the directories to your load path
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/emacs-wiki")
;; Load emacs-wiki
(require 'emacs-wiki)
You can download the archive at the following locations:
Choose the development version if you want to live on the bleeding edge of emacs-wiki development or try out new features before release.
The Arch revision control system allows you to retrieve previous versions and select specific features and bug fixes.
Downloading the modules for the first time:
# Register the archive
tla register-archive http://www.mwolson.org/archives/2005
# Download emacs-wiki module into the emacs-wiki/ subdirectory
tla get [email protected]/emacs-wiki--main--1.0 emacs-wiki
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/emacs-wiki")
To list upstream changes not in local copy:
# Change to the source directory you are interested in. Example:
cd emacs-wiki/
# Display the summary of changes
tla missing --summary
To update to the latest version:
cd emacs-wiki
tla replay
You can also obtain the archive at the following locations on the web:
The latest development snapshot will be kept up to date since it is updated at the same time as the Arch repository.
Wiki is a concept, more than a thing. It is a way of creating document pages using plain text markup and simplified hyperlinking.
By typing a name in MixedCase (also known as CamelCase), a hyperlink is automatically created to the document MixedCase. Pressing return on that name will create the file if it doesn't exist, or visit it if it does.
The markup used by Emacs-Wiki is intended to be very friendly to people familiar with Emacs. Type C-h v emacs-wiki-publishing-markup after this mode is loaded for more information on how to get started.
Wiki's are often associated with sites that allow collaborative editing of a website. emacs-wiki is not meant to produce this sort of site, although you can use Emacs to serve web pages. See emacs-wiki-httpd.el for more information. Note that this feature is not well-tested.
To begin using Emacs-Wiki, put this in your .emacs file:
(load ``emacs-wiki'')
Now you can type M-x emacs-wiki-find-file, give it a WikiName (or just hit return) and start typing!
You should also type M-x customize-group, and give the name ‘emacs-wiki’. Change it to suit your preferences. Each of the options has its own documentation.
Here is a summary of keystrokes available in every Wiki buffer:
Here is a description of the default markup rules:
Headings
* First level
** Second level
*** Third level
Note that the first level is actually indicated using H2, so that it doesn't appear at the same level as the page heading (which conceptually titles the section of that Wiki page).
Horizontal rules
----
Emphasis
*emphasis*
**strong emphasis**
***very strong emphasis***
_underlined text_
=verbatim=
<verbatim>This tag should be used for larger blocks of text</verbatim>.
Footnotes
A reference[1], which is just a number in square brackets, constitutes a footnote reference.
Footnotes:
[1] Footnotes are defined by the same number in brackets
occurring at the beginning of a line. Use footnote-mode's C-c
! a command, to very easily insert footnotes while typing. Use
C-x C-x to return to the point of insertion.
Paragraphs
One or more blank lines separates paragraphs.
Centered paragraphs and quotations
A line that begins with six or more columns of whitespace (made up of tabs or spaces) indicates a centered paragraph. I assume this because it's expected you will use M-s to center the line, which usually adds a lot of whitespace before it.
If a line begins with some whitespace, but less than six columns, it indicates a quoted paragraph.
Poetic verse
Poetry requires that whitespace be preserved, without resorting to the monospace typical of <pre>. For this, the following special markup exists, which is reminiscent of e-mail quotations:
> A line of Emacs verse;
> forgive its being so terse.
You can also use the <verse> tag, if you prefer:
<verse>
A line of Emacs verse;
forgive its being so terse.
</verse>
Literal paragraphs
Use the HTML tags <pre></pre> to insert a paragraph and preserve whitespace. If you're inserting a block of code, you will almost always want to use <verbatim></verbatim> *within* the <pre> tags. The shorcut for doing this is to use the <example> tag:
<example>
Some literal text or code here.
</example>
Tables
There are two forms of table markup supported. If Takaaki Ota's table.el package is available, then simply create your tables using his package, and they will be rendered into the appropriate HTML. You need to (require 'emacs-wiki-table) for this functionality.
If table.el is not available, then only very simple table markup is supported. The attributes of the table are kept in `emacs-wiki-table-attributes'. The syntax is:
Double bars || Separate header fields
Single bars | Separate body fields
Here are more | body fields
Triple bars ||| Separate footer fields
Other paragraph markup applies to both styles, meaning that if six or more columns of whitespace precedes the first line of the table, it will be centered, and if any whitespace at all precedes first line, it will occur in a blockquote.
Anchors and tagged links
#example If you begin a line with "#anchor" – where anchor can be any word that doesn't contain whitespace – it defines an anchor at that point into the document. This anchor text is not displayed.
You can reference an anchored point in another page (or even in the current page) using WikiName#anchor. The #anchor will never be displayed in HTML, whether at the point of definition or reference, but it will cause browsers to jump to that point in the document.
Redirecting to another page or URL
Sometimes you may wish to redirect someone to another page. To do this, put:
<redirect url=\"http://somewhereelse.com\"/>
at the top of the page. If the <redirect> tag specifies content, this will be used as the redirection message, rather than the default.
The numbers of seconds to delay is defined by `emacs-wiki-redirect-delay', which defaults to 2 seconds. The page shown will also contain a link to click on, for browsing which do not support automatic refreshing.
URLs
A regular URL is given as a link. If it's an image URL, it will be inlined using an IMG tag.
Special handling of WikiNames
If you need to add a plural at the end of a WikiName, separate it with four single quotes (WikiName””s) or make it an explicit link ([[WikiName]]s).
To prevent a link name (of any type) from being treated as such, surround it with =equals= (to display it in monotype), or prefix it with the tag <nop> to escape it from WikiName markup.
Special Wiki links
Besides the normal WikiName type links, emacs-wiki also supports extended links:
[[link text][optional link description]]
An extended link is always a link, no matter how it looks. This means you can use any file in your `emacs-wiki-directories' as a Wiki file. If you provide an optional description, that's what will be shown instead of the link text. This is very useful for providing textual description of URLs.
See the documentation to emacs-wiki-image-regexp for how to inline files and images.
InterWiki names
There are times when you will want to constantly reference pages on another website. Rather than repeating the URL ad nauseum, you can define an InterWiki name. This is a set of WikiNames to URL correlations, that support textual substitution using #anchor names (which are appended to the URL). For example, MeatballWiki is defined in the variable `emacs-wiki-interwiki-names'. It means you can reference the page \"MeatBall\" on MeatballWiki using this syntax:
MeatballWiki#MeatBall
In the resulting HTML, the link is simply shown as
MeatballWiki:MeatBall
For convenience, if you want to change the visible title or the stylesheet used by a certain Wiki page during HTML publishing, just put:
#title Hello there
#style hello.css
at the top of the page.
Whitespace is required after bullets and numbers thot are part of a list.
Here is an example:
- This
- Is
- A
- List
1. This
2. too
But this is not,
--even if it starts with dashes
0.1] or numbers, as in the original test case.
Sub-lists?
There is no inherent support for sub-lists, since the author couldn't think of a simple way to do it. But if you really need them, here's a trick you can use:
- Hello
<ul>
<li>There
<li>My friend
</ul>
You can include links of the form ‘[[some/link][some/image]]’. If you want to include alt text, use ‘[[some/link][some/image alt text]]’.
You may need to have auto-image-file-mode set to ‘t’ for
this to work.
<lisp></lisp> tags can be used, not only to evaluate forms for
insertion at that point, but to influence the publishing process in
many ways. Here's another way to change a page's stylesheet:
<lisp>
(ignore
;; use special.css for this Wiki page
(set (make-variable-buffer-local 'emacs-wiki-style-sheet)
"<link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"special.css\" />"))
</lisp>
The ignore is needed so nothing is inserted where the
<lisp> tag occurred. Also, there should be no blank lines
before or after the tag (to avoid empty paragraphs from being
created). The best place to put this would be at the very top or
bottom of the page.
By default, non-existent links are converted into mailto: links in
published HTML. This allows website visitors to e-mail
emacs-wiki-maintainer for missing information. If you want
non-existent links to be rendered as plain text, set
emacs-wiki-markup-nonexistent-link to nil.
In HTML served directly from Emacs using httpd and emacs-wiki-httpd.el, non-existent links are always editable links.
For specially marking up Wiki text, XML-style tags are the best way to
add custom markup to Emacs Wiki, which expects a closing tag and/or an
optional set of attributes. This is easily accomplished by customizing
this list of markup tags defined in emacs-wiki-markup-tags.
Here is a summary of the default tags. This also includes the dangerous
tags listed in emacs-wiki-dangerous-tags, which may not be used
by outsiders.
Please refer to document of emacs-wiki-markup-tags and
emacs-wiki-dangerous-tags for detail infomation and customization
instructions.
verbatim
Protects against highlighting and wiki interpretation, and escapes any characters which have special meaning to the publishing format. For HTML, this means characters like '<' are escaped as HTML entities.
example
Like verbatim, but typesets in HTML using the <pre> tag, with class=example, so whitespace formatting is preserved.
nowiki
Inhibits wiki markup, but does not do any escaping to the underlying publishing medium. Useful for embedding HTML, PHP, etc.
verse
Typesets like a normal paragraph, but without word-wrapping. That is, whitespace is preserved.
redirect
Using the "url" attribute, you can specify that a page should redirect to another page. The remaining contents of the page will not be published. The optional "delay" attribute specifies how long to wait before redirecting.
nop
When placed before a WikiLink, it will prevent that WikiLink from being treated as such. Good for names like DocBook.
contents
Produces a compact table of contents for any section heading at the same level or lower than the next section header encountered. Optional "depth" attribute specifies how deep the table of contents should go.
lisp
Evaluate the region as a Lisp form, and displays the result. When highlighting, the `display' text property is used, preserving the underlying text. Turn off font-lock mode if you wish to edit it.
command
Pass the region to a command interpretor and insert the result, guarding
it from any further expansion. Optional "file" attribute specifies the
shell or interpretor to use. If none is given, and
emacs-wiki-command-tag-file has not been configured, Eshell is
used.
python, perl
Pass the region to the Python or Perl language interpretor, and insert the result.
c-source
Markup the region as C or C++ source code, using the c2html program, if available. Optional boolean attribute "numbered" will cause source lines to be numbered.
Note: If c2html is not available, the region will be converted to HTML friendly text (i.e., <> turns into <>), and placed in a <pre> block. In this case, line numbering is not available.
bookmarks
Insert bookmarks at the location of the tag from the given bookmarks file. Required attribute "file" specifies which file to read from, and the optional attribute "type" may be one of: adr (for Opera), lynx, msie, ns, xbel or xmlproc. The default type is "xbel". The optional attribute "folder" may be used to specify which folder (and its children) should be inserted.
emacs-wiki.el defines the following interactive functions:
Edit the current link. Do not rename the Wiki page originally referred to.
Open the Emacs Wiki page wiki by name. If command is non-nil, it is the function used to visit the file. If directory is non-nil, it is the directory in which the Wiki page will be created if it does not already exist.
Move backward to the next Wiki link or URL, cycling if necessary. This function is not entirely accurate, but it's close enough.
Rebuild file alist and refresh current project. Call after creating a page.
Visit the link at point, or insert a newline if none.
Visit the link at point, or yank text if none.
Rename the link under point, and the location it points to. This does not work with URLs, and will preserve a description in an extended link.
Delete the link under point, and the location it points to. This does not work with URLs.
Publish an index of the Wiki pages. This function can be added to
emacs-wiki-after-wiki-publish-hook.
Publish all Wikis that need publishing. If the published Wiki already exists, it is only overwritten if the Wiki is newer than the published copy. When given the optional argument arg, all Wikis are rewritten, no matter how recent they are. The index file is rewritten no matter what.
Change Wiki projects.
When called interactively, load the welcome page of the selected project in a new buffer. If no project is selected, the default project as specified in
emacs-wiki-default-projectwill be used.Note that the project will only be changed if the welcome page exists for the target project. This may be changed in the future to find a nonexistent file, though if this happens it is not clear which of Wiki directory should be used in the case of there being multiple directories.
When called from a Lisp program, update the current buffer's project to project.
The following are several miscellaneous features that might make your emacs-wiki experience more enjoyable.
Using pcomplete
If you have pcomplete loaded, you can type M-TAB to complete Wiki names. Hitting M-TAB two or more times in succession will cycle through all of the possibilities. You can find pcomplete.el in the contrib directory that comes with the emacs-wiki tarball.
ChangeLog
If you use a ChangeLog (C-x 4 a) within one of your Wiki directories, it will be used for notifying visitors to your Wiki of recent changes.
Macros
Macros can be defined for text that you use often. Consult emacs-wiki-macros.el for information on using this feature.
Menu
This feature allows you to make custom and auto-generated navigation menus. Please consult the top of the emacs-wiki-menu.el for reasonably complete documentation.
To get fancy table markup, add:
(require 'emacs-wiki-table)
to your .emacs. In your wiki source files, you can now make tables that look like this:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| A table header |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------+
| Column 1 | Column 2 |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------+
|Some text here |More text here, even wrapping to |
| |the next line |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------+
|Some text here |More text here, even wrapping to |
| |the next line |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------+
See table.el for more information.
emacs-wiki-table.el does not add any interactive functions or keybindings.
Emacs-wiki has a way of supporting multiple Wiki projects. This allows you to make links from one project to another, which are often called interwiki links. This can be convenient if you wish to split your website according to the kind of content, for example.
For now, it is considered good practice to have your multiple projects under a common directory, and not to nest your projects.
You will need something like the following in your .emacs file in order to set up multiple project support.
(setq emacs-wiki-projects
`(("WebWiki" .
((emacs-wiki-directories . ("~/proj/wiki/webpage"))
(emacs-wiki-project-server-prefix . "../wiki/")
(emacs-wiki-publishing-directory
. "~/personal-site/site/wiki")))
("ProjectsWiki" .
((emacs-wiki-directories . ("~/proj/wiki/projects"))
(emacs-wiki-project-server-prefix . "../projects/")
(emacs-wiki-publishing-directory
. "~/personal-site/site/projects")))))
The first phrase on the second line of code is the name of the project. In this example, there are two projects, WebWiki and ProjectsWiki. It would be best for these names to be in mixed case.
The emacs-wiki-directories line indicates which source directories correspond with the particular project. This must be a list.
emacs-wiki-project-server-prefix is the text that will be put at the beginning of each interwiki link at publish time. For example, ‘WebWiki#MyPage’ would be rendered ‘../wiki/MyPage.html’ in its published (HTML) form. It is also acceptable to give an absolute location here, like ‘/projects’, with the root directory corresponding to your root web publishing directory.
emacs-wiki-publishing-directory is the directory where the HTML
content will be placed upon publishing the project. You should make
sure that the content of emacs-wiki-project-server-prefix is
such that a link from a file in one project to a file in another
project is feasible.
Other variables can also be defined in this block if you wish to customize a particular project further.
To get PGG1 support within Emacs Wiki, add
(require 'emacs-wiki-pgg)
to your .emacs. In your wiki source files, you can now have sections of text that is automatically encrypted when published or sections that can be decrypted/encrypted interactively.
Make sure to set pgg-gpg-user-id to your user id. Eg:
(setq pgg-gpg-user-id "Your user id")
There are two interfaces to PGG. This can be controlled via setting the variable emacs-wiki-pgg-interface to the correct function:
- 'pgg-encrypt-show
pgg-encrypt-region2 is called interactively after setting point and mark. Recipients are read from the minibuffer.- 'pgg-encrypt-sign-self
- This is a personalized version of
pgg-encrypt-regionthat is intended when the recipient is self. Message is signed if emacs-wiki-pgg-sign is non-nil. You are welcome to changepgg-encrypt-sign-selfin emacs-wiki-pgg.el to suit your needs.
Set to non-nil if you want the message to be signed when the interface is
pgg-encrypt-sign-self.
Enclose text that you want to encrypt/decrypt interactively in Emacs Wiki mode within these tags. Whitespace is preserved during publish via the <pre> tag.
emacs-wiki-encrypt-gpg.
emacs-wiki-decrypt-gpg.
Example: Consider the following wiki markup
<gpg>Test data</gpg>
Press C-c C-S-e to get:
<gpg>-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
[Imagine encrypted text]
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
</gpg>
Now press C-c C-S-d to get:
<gpg>Test data</gpg>
Enclose unencrypted text within these tags and only its encrypted version will be published to the html file. This is useful when you need to maintain an unencrypted cleartext version in your local wiki source and publish it's encrypted counterpart to your web site.
Example:
<gpge>Test data</gpge>
Resultant html file section:
<pre class="example">-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
[Imagine encrypted text]
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
</pre>
After you have read this guide, if you still have questions about EmacsWikiMode, or if you have bugs to report, there are several places you can go.
http://www.mwolson.org/projects/EmacsWiki.html is the page that Michael Olson made for emacs-wiki. For the duration of his maintainership, it may be considered the official emacs-wiki website.
You can join the mailing list at [email protected] using the subscription form at http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/ emacs-wiki-discuss. This mailing list is also available via Gmane (http://gmane.org/). The group is called ‘gmane.emacs.wiki.general’.
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsWikiMode is the emacswiki.org page, and anyone may add tips and hints to it.
You can visit the IRC Freenode channel ‘#emacs’. Many of the contributors are frequently around and willing to answer your questions.
You can also contact the maintainer of EmacsWikiMode, Michael Olson, at [email protected].
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 John Wiegley
Copyright © 2004 John Sullivan
Copyright © 2004 Damien Elmes
Copyright © 2004 Sacha Chua
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006 Michael Olson
Copyright © 2004 Anirudh Sasikumar
Copyright © 2005 Yu Li
The first draft of this document was made by John Sullivan, and he did a majority of the work on it. Parts of this document were taken from the emacs-wiki.el source code, so a copyright notice for John Wiegley was added.
While Sacha Chua maintained emacs-wiki, she worked quite a bit on this document and split off the Planner and Remember sections.
Michael Olson added several sections, like the one on Multiple Projects. He also reworked some sections in various ways.
Anirudh Sasikumar contributed documentation for the Encryption node. Many thanks to him for implementing this useful feature and documenting it!
Copyright © 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items—whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.
emacs-wiki-backlink: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-change-project: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-delete-link-at-point: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-dired-publish: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-edit-link-at-point: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-find-file: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-follow-name-at-mouse: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-follow-name-at-mouse-other-window: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-follow-name-at-point: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-follow-name-at-point-other-window: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-highlight-buffer: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-index: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-next-reference: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-previous-reference: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-publish: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-publish-index: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-publish-this-page: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-refresh-buffers: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-rename-link-at-point: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-search: Interactive Functionsemacs-wiki-visit-published-file: Interactive Functions