SublimeText 3 Mediawiker

SublimeText 3 is a text editor that supports various language markups and has a number of plugins that can extend functionality. It is an alternative to Notepad++, and on its own can be a useful program to install and use if you don't already use Notepad++. This article will discuss one specific plugin called Mediawiker, which allows you to edit the wiki directly from your text editor without interacting with the browser interface at all.

Benefits of using Mediawiker
There are a number of reasons this is desirable:
 * Syntax highlighting is significantly nicer than the WikEd gadget or other in-browser alternatives
 * Regardless of the skin of your wiki, you can work in night mode
 * The tab character works as desired
 * You can take advantage of other plugins such as BracketHighlighter
 * SublimeText saves your current session, so there's much less chance to lose your work in case of your computer crashing
 * The editing area takes up the entirety of its window, so you have more space to work with; you can also use two-column mode
 * Easy built-in regular expression find-replace support without needing additional browser add-ons

Some editors already prefer to edit locally and then copy-paste code to the wiki; this plugin lets you remove that step of copy-pasting and save directly to the wiki.

Installation
For both installation methods the following step is required.
 * 1) To download SublimeText, go here and download the version you want.

Default installation
(Recommended unless Package Control is offline)
 * 1) You will then need to install Package Control, which is SublimeText's package manager. Follow the instructions here. (Because the installation code that you copy-paste changes per version, it will not be rehosted here, but the instructions they provide are very straightforward.)
 * 2) With package control installed, you can now install Mediawiker. In SublimeText, navigate Preferences &rarr; Package Control and then select Install Package. Start typing "Mediawiker" and select it when it shows up.

Alternative installation

 * 1) You can download the Mediawiker directly from github.com at: Download Overview
 * 2) Select the current release and download the source code (zip for Windows, or tar.gz for UNIX based systems).
 * 3) Extract the content. It will generate you a folder called Mediawiker-RELEASENUMBER. Rename the folder to Mediawiker.
 * 4) Preferences &rarr; Browse Packages in Sublime. It will open your package folder. Now move the folder Mediawiker inside your package folder.

Configuration
SublimeText does all of its configuration through editable config files, rather than GUIs. Go to Preferences &rarr; Package Settings &rarr; Mediawiker &rarr; Settings. A new window of SublimeText should open with 2 columns. Add the following to your user settings (the right side), replacing fields as needed. Save the file once you are done.

If you don't have a bot password yet, follow the instructions about getting a bot password. Because Mediawiker doesn't do any automated tasks for you, you can be liberal about giving this password permissions, but of course as a good practice don't give it anything you definitely won't need.

Optional: Set key bindings
If you want, you can also edit key bindings (aka hotkeys) by opening the key bindings settings from the same path as the general settings file. You will probably want  and   to be easily accessible. If you switch wikis a lot, you will want to use  a lot too.

Here's an example set of custom key bindings that you could put in the user side of the key-bindings settings view:

Opening pages
The following actions are done through the Command Palette, which you can access via Ctrl+Shift+P (or Cmd+Shift+P on Mac). You can see the current hotkey, if one is available, in the right-hand column of the palette.


 * 1) Set up your active wiki with  . Then select a wiki from the dropdown provided and press enter.
 * 2) * No wikis showing up here? Did you remember to save your config file after editing?
 * 3) * Did you edit the USER file (the one on the right side - as opposed to the default one)?
 * 4) Open a page for the first time with  . Then type the full name of the page (including namespace if applicable) into the field provided and press enter.
 * 5) Reopen a recent page with  . Then select a page and press enter.

Recommended additional plugins
Use the package manager to install all of these.
 * BracketHighlighter
 * ColorSchemeEditor, if you like to customize your styles. This will also require the following two plugins:
 * PackageResourceViewer
 * Sublime ColorPicker
 * Schemr, for easy navigation between color schemes you have installed. Pro tip: Filter the list by typing  or   into the palette