[Pmwiki-users] Re: Need help with markup

[Jonathan Scott Duff]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 04:13:16PM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 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']]
	...

How about an "escape" mechanism that will allow the user to use
arbitrary HTML.  Something like this:

[[<
	<table border="1">
	<tr><td align="left">
	...
>]]

Since this would be an "advanced" feature for PmWiki users, they
shoudl be informed of the risks they take.

> 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

You can say that again  :-)

> As opposed to using HTML directly, I can invent my own table markup that 
> converts in an HTML-safe manner.  

I like this idea greatly ...

> 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]]

But I'm not too keen on the proposed syntax.  Why not take an idea
from POD and make any line that starts with an = do something
table-special?

	=tstart border='1'
	=trow
  	Here is some PmWiki text.
  	* Bullet lists okay
  	* Still okay
	=tcol align='right'
  	Here is a second cell, the text here is right aligned.
	=tend

Anything to the end of the line becomes part of whatever tags you need
to use in the HTML.

> For this second format I'd be initially against nested tables 

I agree.

> Bad ideas?  Good ideas?  Comments?  Suggestions?

Yes.  :-)

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at cbi.tamucc.edu