[Pmwiki-users] Re: Need help with markup

[Jessica Tishmack]

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:

> 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.


I agree with subsequent emails, that this will discourage those who don't 
knwo HTML from editing pages, if they see things they have no idea about.


> 
> > 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]]


I like the above a lot...better than the [[/table]] type stuff.  I think 
"tablecol" and "tablerow" will make more sense to the average user than 
"td" and "tr".  However, I think it would make more sense if a "tablecol" 
was listed right after the row.  So, the above could look more like this:

     [[tablestart border='1']]  
     [[tablerow]]
     [[tablecol]]
     This would represent the first row/first column
     * Bullet lists okay
     * Still okay
     [[tablecol align='right']]
     This would represent the first row/second column, text right aligned.
     [[tablerow]]
     [[tablecol]]
     This would represent the second row/first column
     [[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.


I don't like the above.  A couple reasons.  I think the entire word 
"tablestart" should be used rather than tstart...otherwise, some people 
who are new to this might forget what tstart means, but they would never 
forget what tablestart means.  And the equal signs seem less prominent to 
me than the [[]] signs.  I think the user has already been conditioned to 
know that [[]] means some internal pmwiki markup, so I think it should 
stay that way...too much to remember, and they won't bother to use new 
features.


> > For this second format I'd be initially against nested tables 
> 
> I agree.
> 
> > Bad ideas?  Good ideas?  Comments?  Suggestions?
> 
> Yes.  :-)

42 :-)

Jessica

> 
> -Scott
>