Auto Signatures like in this wiki are called "magic words" by mediawiki software designers - that is, data substituted at edit time ( ~~~~ as signature, ~~~~~ as date) or at render time (so-called MAGICWORDS ) are poorly provided in the syntax.

Without complicating, may I suggest a structure in the creole schema to handle "such arbitrary words as the wiki designer/creole user might wish to create"?

Common Magic Words

• Signature
• DateTime
• Both in combination

Suggestions

Syntax would be a single char prefix , hence <char><a-z><non-a-z terminator

Problem: We use tilde as escape character, so we need some other characters for this.

Syntax in other engines

The JSPWiki Creole filter implements one magic word, the autosignature, but only for conveniance reasons, not because of the spec. It was taken over from mediawiki markup.

MoinMoin uses @MAGICWORD@, for example @SIG@ for "-- UserName Date".