[Pmwiki-users] Need help with markup

[Patrick R. Michaud]

BTW, the markup I'm proposing below would be in addition to the current
'||' table markup, not to replace it.

Pm


On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> Hey folks, I need some suggestions about some PmWiki markup I'm considering
> adding to the current system.
> 
> I have a couple of places where I need to be able to create tables
> that are more sophisticated than what PmWiki currently allows.  For
> example, I'd like to be able to put headers and bullet lists and other
> stuff inside of table cells.  The current table markup doesn't support
> this.
> 
> I've come up with several ways to handle this.  The simplest from an
> implementation perspective is to simply bring the HTML table markup
> tags to the surface (I'm voting for double brackets over angle brackets
> for a variety of reasons):
> 
> 	[[table border='1']]
> 	[[tr]][[td align='left']]
> 	Here is some PmWiki text.
> 	* Bullet lists okay
> 	* Still okay
> 	[[/td]][[td align='right']]
> 	Here is a second cell, the text here is right aligned.
> 	[[/td]][[/tr]][[/table]]
> 
> This would allow folks to write reasonably arbitrary table markup in
> a wiki page, assuming they understand table tags in HTML.  This would
> also make it possible for people to create pages that aren't valid HTML;
> e.g., if they forget a closing tag.  In fact, forgetting the closing 
> "[[/table]]" markup would cause all sorts of formatting problems, especially
> in Netscape or for wiki content embedded in larger page structures.  
> Alternatively I could try to make the PmWiki markup engine
> smart enough to completely understand the HTML table structure and
> have it add in the appropriate missing tags where appropriate, but that
> seems a bit more complex than what I was originally aiming for.
> Plus, the markup looks ugly here, and might scare off some potential 
> wiki page authors for pages that use the tables.
> 
> As opposed to using HTML directly, I can invent my own table markup that 
> converts in an HTML-safe manner.  For example, if the tag "[[tablerow]]" 
> means start a cell in a new row and "[[tablecol]]" means start a 
> new column in the current row, then:
> 
> 	[[tablestart border='1']]
> 	[[tablerow]]
> 	Here is some PmWiki text.
> 	* Bullet lists okay
> 	* Still okay
> 	[[tablecol align='right']]
> 	Here is a second cell, the text here is right aligned.
> 	[[tableend]]
> 
> Arbitrary table cell attributes would still be available; and it would
> also make other things possible such as "rowspan" or setting individual 
> cell widths.
> 
> For this second format I'd be initially against nested tables but
> those could conceivably be added at some point in the future.
> 
> Bad ideas?  Good ideas?  Comments?  Suggestions?
> 
> Pm
> 
> 
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