Nothing too special. I have some poetry on my site, so I wanted a way to add 'tabs'. Since you can't really do tabs in HTML, I decided to just use non-breaking spaces (nbsp's) instead. 5 nbsp's = 1 tab.

Simply insert '<tab>' into the text. When DokuWiki parses it, it will replace '<tab>' with 5 nbsp's.

lib/plugins/tab/syntax.php

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Tab: Inserts "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" into the document for every <tab> it encounters
 * 
 * @license    GPL 2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
 * @author     Tim Skoch <timskoch@hotmail.com>
 */
 
if(!defined('DOKU_INC')) define('DOKU_INC',realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../../').'/');
if(!defined('DOKU_PLUGIN')) define('DOKU_PLUGIN',DOKU_INC.'lib/plugins/');
require_once(DOKU_PLUGIN.'syntax.php');
 
/**
 * All DokuWiki plugins to extend the parser/rendering mechanism
 * need to inherit from this class
 */
class syntax_plugin_tab extends DokuWiki_Syntax_Plugin {
 
    /**
     * return some info
     */
    function getInfo(){
        return array(
            'author' => 'Tim Skoch',
            'email'  => 'timskoch@hotmail.com',
            'date'   => '2006-08-16',
            'name'   => 'Tab Plugin',
            'desc'   => 'Inserts "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" into the html of the document for every <tab> it encounters',
            'url'    => 'http://www.dokuwiki.org/wiki:plugins:tab',
        );
    }
 
    /**
     * What kind of syntax are we?
     */
    function getType(){
        return 'substition';
    }
 
    /**
     * What kind of syntax do we allow (optional)
     */
//    function getAllowedTypes() {
//        return array();
//    }
 
    /**
     * What about paragraphs? (optional)
     */
//    function getPType(){
//        return 'normal';
//    }
 
    /**
     * Where to sort in?
     */ 
    function getSort(){
        return 999;
    }
 
 
    /**
     * Connect pattern to lexer
     */
    function connectTo($mode) {
      $this->Lexer->addSpecialPattern('<tab>',$mode,'plugin_tab');
//      $this->Lexer->addEntryPattern('<TEST>',$mode,'plugin_test');
    }
 
//    function postConnect() {
//      $this->Lexer->addExitPattern('</TEST>','plugin_test');
//    }
 
 
    /**
     * Handle the match
     */
    function handle($match, $state, $pos, &$handler){
        switch ($state) {
          case DOKU_LEXER_ENTER : 
            break;
          case DOKU_LEXER_MATCHED :
            break;
          case DOKU_LEXER_UNMATCHED :
            break;
          case DOKU_LEXER_EXIT :
            break;
          case DOKU_LEXER_SPECIAL :
            break;
        }
        return array();
    }
 
    /**
     * Create output
     */
    function render($mode, &$renderer, $data) {
        if($mode == 'xhtml'){
            $renderer->doc .= "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;";            // ptype = 'normal'
//            $renderer->doc .= "<p>Hello World!</p>";     // ptype = 'block'
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}
 
//Setup VIM: ex: et ts=4 enc=utf-8 :

Just like any other plugin: Create a new folder “lib/plugins/tab”, and create a file “syntax.php” with the above code as its contents.

Enjoy!

Is any really necessary?

Tim,

We used your code to spawn our pagebreak plugin. Thanks a million for giving us a starting point. ~Jonathan and Chris

2010-05-18 It doesn't work in lastest version. Did you test it in lastest version?

Could be done in less lines (drop test code etc).

<?php
 
/**
 * Plugin Tab: Inserts "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" into the document for every <tab> it encounters
 * 
 * @license    GPL 2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
 * @author     Tim Skoch <timskoch@hotmail.com>
 */
 
if(!defined('DOKU_INC')) define('DOKU_INC',realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../../').'/');
if(!defined('DOKU_PLUGIN')) define('DOKU_PLUGIN',DOKU_INC.'lib/plugins/');
require_once(DOKU_PLUGIN.'syntax.php');
 
/**
 * All DokuWiki plugins to extend the parser/rendering mechanism
 * need to inherit from this class
 */
class syntax_plugin_tab extends DokuWiki_Syntax_Plugin {
 
    /**
     * return some info
     */
    function getInfo(){
        return array(
            'author' => 'Tim Skoch',
            'email'  => 'timskoch@hotmail.com',
            'date'   => '2006-08-16',
            'name'   => 'Tab Plugin',
            'desc'   => 'Inserts "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" into the html of the document for every <tab> it encounters',
            'url'    => 'http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:tab',
        );
    }
 
    /**
     * What kind of syntax are we?
     */
    function getType(){
        return 'substition';
    }
 
    /**
     * Where to sort in?
     */ 
    function getSort(){
        return 999;
    }
 
    /**
     * Connect pattern to lexer
     */
    function connectTo($mode) {
      $this->Lexer->addSpecialPattern('<tab>', $mode, 'plugin_tab');
    }
 
    /**
     * Handle the match
     */
    function handle($match, $state, $pos, &$handler){
        return array();
    }
 
    /**
     * Create output
     */
    function render($mode, &$renderer, $data) {
        if($mode == 'xhtml'){
            $renderer->doc .= '&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;';
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}
 
?>

When we updated to the latest version of DokuWiki, this broke. It failed to interpret “&nbsp;” as a non-breaking space, and simply displayed it as text instead. The quick fix for me was to replace “     ” with “     ”. Works for us, but we are a one-language shop and our limited user base is almost exclusively using Firefox. YMMV.
— Nathan Randall 2008-04-15 10:33

2011-07-26 Works great in latest version using “New Code” above. Thanks