[Pmwiki-users] the descriptions of emphasis

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 12:23:33PM -0500, Tom Holroyd wrote:
> > '++bigger++' and '--smaller--' did cross my mind this morning.
> 
> Um, not to be picky or anything, but why do we need seperate 
> syntax for html constructs?
> 
> Are we hiding arcane html gobbledygook with equally arcane, 
> non-standard gobbledygook?
> 
> At what point do we say, hey, just use html markup?

Because html markup is hard to read and edit, especially 
for people who don't know it, and this is a collaborative
authoring environment.  If you're working in a blog or other 
environment where people only add to content but don't
edit others' posts, then you're in pretty good shape,
but when an HTML expert places a lot of HTML tags into
the source markup, they effectively discourage or block
the non-HTML-experts from contributing.

> These things are just shortcuts, right?

Nope, they're a different markup language, and in many
cases the markups add features and/or structure that 
simply don't exist in HTML (consider <<|WikiTrails|>>, 
[[!Categories]], (:include:), (:search:), headers,
footers, etc.).

Pm