[Pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Authors/Users WikiGroup?

Christian Ridderström chr
Tue Feb 3 02:16:44 CST 2004


On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 05:02:56PM -0600, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> > 
> > I'd prefer shorter too, but isn't part of the point that this will
> > rarely need to be typed?  Contributors will just put --Scott and that
> > will magically turn into --Contributors/{{Scott}}
> 
> Allowing "--username" as markup at the end of a line is still just a
> proposed addition at the moment--it hasn't necessarily been adopted
> (although there seems to be fairly strong support).  Plus, there are 
> times when I might want to make reference to another person in the 
> middle of a paragraph, as in
> 
>    Contributors/{{Scott}} says that Contributors/{{Pm}} is allowed
>    to do what Pm wants ala Larry Wall.  

Just to try out the above sentence with different alternatives:

    Contributors/{{Scott}} says that Contributors/{{Pm}} is allowed

    Person/{{Scott}} says that Person/{{Pm}} is allowed...

    Persons/{{Scott}} says that Persons/{{Pm}} is allowed...

    Home/{{Scott}} says that Home/{{Pm}} is allowed...

    Names/{{Scott}} says that Names/{{Pm}} is allowed...

    Agents/{{Scott}} says that Agents/{{Pm}} is allowed...

Btw, synoms for 'person' gave funny ideas such as:

    Being/{{Scott}} says that Begin/{{Pm}} is allowed...
    Human/{{Scott}} says that Human/{{Pm}} is allowed...

> and I might prefer that Contributors be less cumbersome to type.  
> But, I don't know that this will occur often, and a WikiAdmin can always 
> change the WikiGroup to be something shorter if he/she prefers.
> 
> Returning to the proposed "--username" markup itself, a few questions arise:
> 
> 1.  What should happen by default with "--username" if the page
>     Contributors/Username doesn't exist?  Should it become a '?'-link to
>     create the page, as with other non-existent WikiWords, or should
>     it just be left alone?  (I'll probably make this a configurable
>     option, but want to know what the default behavior should be.)

I think it'd be best if it can become a link (although then we can't limit 
the markup to only check for existing names).

> 2.  In addition to the example that Reimer Behrends gave of a markup
>     alias ("-- That"), the pattern I last proposed would allow names to 
>     begin with lowercase letters which can generate even more 
>     unintended markup aliases.  For example, with the pattern I
>     proposed the following lines in markup would both generate 
>     username links:
> 
> 	ls --all
> 	grep -r -- pattern - otherfile
>     
>     This might be okay if we agree that non-existent usernames don't
>     produce links, but it bothers me a bit that I was able to come
>     up with two non-obvious alias examples so quickly.  Suggestions,
>     comments?

I can live with adding 'hidden' spaces at the end of the line, but it 
might be surprising to other users.

> 
> 3.  I'm not sure how I feel about "[[--username]]" as an author-link
>     markup; it just doesn't look quite as natural as "--username".  
>     On the other hand, it makes it pretty clear that a link is
>     intended.

Must this be an 'exclusive or'-situation --- can't we have both?
AFAIK we don't use '[[--...]]' for anything else, allowiing us to rewrite 

     Contributors/{{Scott}} says that Contributors/{{Pm}} is allowed

as follows

     [[--Scott]] says that [[--Pm]] is allowed

Hmm... or what about using '~' instead? E.g.

     [[~Scott]] says that [[~Pm]] is allowed

Anybody used to unix will recognize that (but nobody else I guess :-)
OTOH, we could say that signatures at the end of lines are written as
	~~Pm
(IMO '--Pm' looks nicer though).

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr





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