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This page describes Monkey Tags, which you can use in your profile, forum messages, open invitation notes, and private messages to spice up your text with boldfacing, italics, and even images and links to other websites. Monkey Tags are like the tags you can find in the forums on many sites (including Pocket-Monkey); they're also sometimes known as UBB code, or vB code. But here at Pocket-Monkey, you can use them in lots of places, not just the forum!

The following brief article by T.J. Crowder, the First Primate here at Pocket-Monkey, was written entirely using Monkey Tags rather than HTML:

A Quick FAQ on Monkey Tags Overview Monkey Tags are a bit like HTML tags, but they use [ and ] instead of < and >, and only a small subset of HTML functionality is supported. Tags typically surround the text they operate on, so for instance "this is [b]bold[/b]" displays as "this is bold". Start tags look like [xyz], end tags look like [/xyz]. Decoration You can make your text boldfaced, italicized, underlined, and/or striken out; some examples: [b]boldface[/b] = boldface [i]italics[/i] = italics [u]underlining[/u] = underlining [s]strikeout[/s] = strikeout You can combine these, so "[b][i]wow![/i][/b]" shows up as "wow!". Links You can make a web address a link by putting it inside [url] tags, e.g.: [url]www.pocket-monkey.com[/url] becomes http://www.pocket-monkey.com (that's a link). You can also use descriptive text for the link by putting the address inside the start tag with an equal sign (=) in front of it, and putting your text between the tags. So [url=www.pocket-monkey.com]nifty game site[/url] becomes nifty game site (that's also a link). Warning: There's a bug in the MonkeyTags at the moment in that if the URL you're putting in the tag contains an equal sign, your tag won't work the way you want it to. Until we fix it, just use the other form (where the whole URL is between the tags) instead. Message Links Although you could use the [url] tag to link to messages in the forum, it would be awkward and it would break any time we changed how the forum works. Fortunately, there's a better way: The [msg] tag! If you look at the header on any message in the forum, you'll see that each message has a messaage #. You can link to that message by putting its message # in a [msg] tag after an equal sign, like this: [msg=1]first message[/msg], which shows up as a link to message #1, like this: first message. Just change the "1" in my example to the message # for the message you want to link to. Thread Links Sometimes, you want to link to an entire thread, and so there's a way to do that, too: The [thread] tag. At the top of a thread, you'll see the thread header which shows the thread # for that thread on the left hand side. You can link to that thread by putting its thread # in a [thread] tag after an equal sign, like this: [thread=1]first thread[/thread], which shows up as a link to thread #1, like this: first thread. Just change the "1" in my example to the thread # for the thread you want to link to. Player Links You can link to a player's profile using the [player] tag. Just put the player name in the tags, like this: [player]T.J.[/player] and the the link will look like this: T.J.. Alternately, you can use an equal sign in the opening tag and give the player's name that way, with whatever text you want between the tags, so: [player=T.J.]the First Primate[/player] => the First Primate. Game Links You can link to a game using the [game] tag with the game number, like this: "Hey, check out the [game=331891]last game[/game] of the first tournament!" which comes out like this: "Hey, check out the last game of the first tournament!". You'll find the game number underneat the game board in all of your games. Note that only you and your opponent can see the game unless it's a tournament game. Tournament Links You can link to a tournament using the [tourney] tag with the tournament #, like this: "Hey, check out the [tourney=1]first tournament[/tourney] on Pocket-Monkey!" which comes out like this: "Hey, check out the first tournament on Pocket-Monkey!". You'll find the tournament # on the the tournament's page, just above the time limits. Email Links You can do much the same thing with email addresses as with URLs: [email]tj@pocket-monkey.com[/email] becomes tj@pocket-monkey.com (an email link), and [email=tj@pocket-monkey.com]my email address[/email] becomes my email address (another email link). Quoting In the message forms, if you reply to a message, the dialog box will have an option for quoting the original text of the message you're replying to. It does this (and you can too!) by surrounding the text with [quote] tags. So "John Q. Public wrote: [quote]You think I'm being silly[/quote]" shows up as: John Q. Public wrote: You think I'm being silly Code You can mark text to be displayed in a monospaced font by surrounding it with [code] tags. At the moment, this always starts a new line, because they translate to HTML <pre> tags. Example: This: Here's Bart's loop: [code]for (i = 0; i < 5000; ++i) { printf("%s\n", "I will not tell tales out of school."); }[/code] (there are four spaces before "printf", but they won't show up in the browser) displays as: Here's Bart's loop: for (i = 0; i < 5000; ++i) { printf("%s\n", "I will not tell tales out of school."); } Lists You can create lists of things by using [list] tags (which have both a beginning and an end) with bullet items in them, each bullet item starting with [*] (there is no end tag for the bullet items). So this text: [list] [*]One [*]Two [*]Three [/list] shows up like this: One Two Three You can also create numbered lists, by putting an "=1" in the opening [list] tag: [list=1] [*]One [*]Two [*]Three [/list] shows up like this: One Two Three Other choices are "A" for an alphabetically-"numbered" list, "a" for the same thing in lower case, "I" for Roman numerals, and "i" for lower-case Roman numerals. Last example: [list=i] [*]One [*]Two [*]Three [/list] shows up like this: One Two Three Manual Line Breaks Normally, if you press [Enter] when writing something with Monkey Tags, a line break like these ones will show up, which is what you want. However, some tags (like [quote]) "eat" line breaks near them because it makes things a bit easier for you (since they create their own line breaks). Sometimes, you want to force the site to include a line break it would otherwise "eat," and for that we have the [br] tag (which has no end tag). So, while this text: [quote] But she said "I don't [i]think[/i] so!" [/quote] shows up as: But she said "I don't think so!" this text: [quote] [br]But she said "I don't [i]think[/i] so!" [/quote] shows up as: But she said "I don't think so!" (See how it keeps that initial line break, because you told it to. Can't see why you'd want to, but there we are.) Escapes The astute reader will want to know how I put those tags in this article -- if [b]bold[/b] is supposed to make text bold, how did I put [b]bold[/b] in this article? The answer is an "escape" character. I just put a backslash (\\) in front of the opening '[' character of both the start and end tags, like this: \\[b]bold\\[/b]. That tells the site to leave them alone. [Note that a "backslash" ('\\') is not the same as as "slash" ('/'). Also note that you don't need the backslash in front of all '[' characters, just ones that are part of a MonkeyTag. So for instance, I didn't need them in the brackets surrounding this parenthetical sentence.] But what if you want to have a backslash in your text? Most of the time, you're fine, just type them and they'll show up normally, they're only special if they're right in front of a '[' character. But if you really, really want to have a backslash in front of a '[', you'll have to put in two backslashes (the first "escapes" the second), like this: "\\\\[b]this is bold[/b]". (But right now there's a bug in the Monkey Tags stuff and that doesn't quite work the way it should -- the tags still show up in your text. I'll get to it.) Clear as mud? Well, that's why we have a proofreading feature in the forums, and why you can change your profile and such any time you like. In the forums, before you post your message, use the "Proofread First" button to check that your message appears the way you want it to. I used the forums to compose this article, because I wanted the Proofreading feature -- and believe me, I used it a lot! ;-) Well, that's about it. Have fun! -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com