MEDIAWIKI vs TEXTILE
A detailed comparison of MediaWiki Markup and Textile Markup — file size, quality, compatibility, and which format to choose for your workflow.
MediaWiki Markup
Documents & TextMediaWiki markup is the wikitext syntax used by Wikipedia and thousands of MediaWiki-powered wikis. It provides formatting for links, tables, templates, categories, and references, powering one of the largest collaborative content systems.
About MEDIAWIKI filesTextile Markup
Documents & TextTextile is a lightweight markup language that generates HTML from a human-readable syntax. It was popularized by the Textpattern CMS and the Redmine project management tool, offering a cleaner writing experience than raw HTML.
About TEXTILE filesStrengths Comparison
MEDIAWIKI Strengths
- Powers Wikipedia — battle-tested at planet scale.
- Templates enable reusable content blocks.
- Internal links, categories, and interwiki references work out of the box.
- Huge existing tooling and translation ecosystem.
TEXTILE Strengths
- More expressive than Markdown in classical usage (tables, footnotes, classes).
- Mature implementation in RedCloth (Ruby), php-textile, js-textile.
- Core format of Redmine — millions of daily users.
- Clean human-readable syntax.
Limitations
MEDIAWIKI Limitations
- Parsing is notoriously hard — context-sensitive by design.
- Authoring requires learning the unique syntax.
- Lacks standardization — no formal spec, just the MediaWiki implementation.
- Markdown has eroded wiki use cases for smaller projects.
TEXTILE Limitations
- Market share decimated by Markdown since the mid-2000s.
- Not as widely supported outside the Ruby/Rails ecosystem.
- No CommonMark-style spec — implementations differ on edge cases.
- Rarely added to new projects in 2026.
Technical Specifications
| Specification | MEDIAWIKI | TEXTILE |
|---|---|---|
| MIME type | text/x-wiki | text/x-textile |
| Extensions | .mediawiki, .wiki | .textile |
| Parser | MediaWiki core + Parsoid (HTML) | — |
| Encoding | UTF-8 | UTF-8 |
| Canonical user | Wikipedia + Wikimedia sister projects | — |
| Implementations | — | RedCloth (Ruby), php-textile, js-textile |
| Primary users | — | Redmine, Textpattern, early Rails |
Typical File Sizes
MEDIAWIKI
- Short Wikipedia article source 5-30 KB
- Long Wikipedia article with templates 50-300 KB
- Full Wikipedia XML dump ~20 GB compressed
TEXTILE
- Blog post 3-30 KB
- Redmine wiki page 5-50 KB
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Convert between MEDIAWIKI and TEXTILE online, free, and without installing anything. Encrypted upload, automatic deletion after 2 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
MEDIAWIKI (MediaWiki Markup) is a document format used to store paginated text, with optional formatting, tables, images, hyperlinks, headers and footers. It sits in the documents & text family and is typically associated with a specific office suite or publishing pipeline that defined the format and ships the canonical reader.
TEXTILE (Textile Markup) is a document format used to store paginated text, with optional formatting, tables, images, hyperlinks, headers and footers. It sits in the documents & text family and is typically associated with a specific office suite or publishing pipeline that defined the format and ships the canonical reader.
Modern office suites — Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice Writer, Apple Pages — open most MEDIAWIKI files with reasonable fidelity. If your installed software does not support MEDIAWIKI, convert to DOCX or PDF first using KaijuConverter; both open in virtually every reader, including free online viewers.
Modern office suites — Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice Writer, Apple Pages — open most TEXTILE files with reasonable fidelity. If your installed software does not support TEXTILE, convert to DOCX or PDF first using KaijuConverter; both open in virtually every reader, including free online viewers.
Upload the MEDIAWIKI to KaijuConverter and pick DOCX, PDF, ODT, RTF, HTML, Markdown, or plain text. Our pipeline runs LibreOffice headlessly plus pandoc for text formats — the same engines behind professional document pipelines. Styles, tables, images, and hyperlinks survive the conversion intact.
Yes, to a high degree. Standard fonts, headings, lists, tables, images, hyperlinks and page structure transfer cleanly. Custom fonts substitute to the closest match if not embedded; obscure layout features unique to MEDIAWIKI (frames, legacy macros) may flatten to static content in the target format.