I have just learned about a module called Markdown, which will hopefully be a good compromise for those who wish writing html were more like writing a wiki. Unfortunately the Markdown markup is not the same as that used in the Sakai wiki, but it still saves a lot of keystrokes over writing the full html.

So, here are some of the things you can do.

Bulletted list. Start lines with + - or *. I'm not sure about *, because that is also supposed to handle bold. Maybe the difference is the space. Here I will try with a mix of all three:

• this one uses plus
• this one uses minus
• this one uses star
  • this one has just one space

Numbered list. Any number followed by a period and a space

1. number one
2. number two, but I used the number 1
3. number 3, but I used zero

italic double star. double underline underlined

heading 1 (leading pound sign

heading 3 (3 leading pound signs)

> Okay, I am trying againg with the blockquoting. The documentation hints that line wrapping isn't going to work, so I'm making a really long line. I don't think I will be advertising this feature if the line wrapping is going to fail.    
>  Here is another indented piece, but with short lines  
>    >  supposedly this will be nested.