[Wikia-l] Character entities in wikitext

[John Beckett]

Angela wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is a less complex option, but for the 
> edge cases, if you didn't want the ugly <nowiki> stuff in the 
> article itself, you could make templates for them instead. 
> Example here:
> http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki:Sandbox#template_version
> 
> so, typing {{s}} would result in "<S-F1>"
> 
> http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Template:S

Thanks. An interesting option.

> I don't know of a reason to use &lt; instead of < in 
> wikitext. Except for those edge cases, I'd expect this to 
> always work on the wiki.

OK. Some documentation would be good. Or, if anyone can point me to the source code,
I'll study that. For example, in wikitext, why do
    these fail: <S-F1> <q-args>
    these work: <Space> <C-Left>

I know the answer is that the MediaWiki software recognises that <s> and <q> have an
html meaning, and the "-" is doing something ... but the source (or some docs)
should reveal what other text might give trouble.

John