[Pmwiki-users] Markup...

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 06:39:00PM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> 
> So I'm just confused now... why use a definition list to insert quotes 
> (indented paragraph), instead of <div>...</div>?

...because until very recently (prior to CSS being widely adopted and
standardized) there wasn't a reliable way to do indented paragraphs
except by using definition lists.  Many browsers such as Netscape
4 cannot properly or reliably process <div> to do indented paragraphs.

One could potentially use the <blockquote> tag, but most browsers force
extra vertical space around a <blockquote>, which is undesirable in
many contexts.  

Example using definition lists (http://www.pmichaud.com/dl.php) and
rendered using IE6:

   <ol><li>Item 1</li>			         1. Item 1
   <li>Item 2                                    2. Item 2
     <dl><dd>Quoted text</dd>                         Quoted text
     <dd>More quoted text</dd>                        More quoted text
       <dl><dd>double-indented</dd></dl>                   double-indented
     </dl>                                       3. Item 3
   </li>
   <li>Item 3</li>
   </ol>

Using blockquotes (http://www.pmichaud.com/bq.php):

   <ol><li>Item 1</li>			         1. Item 1
   <li>Item 2                                    2. Item 2
     <blockquote>Quoted text</blockquote>
     <blockquote>More quoted text                     Quoted text
       <blockquote>double-indented</blockquote>       
     </blockquote>                                    More quoted text
   </li>
   <li>Item 3</li>                                         double-indented

                                                 3. Item 3

I'm still very open to the idea of defining a '->', '-->', '--->' 
markup for indented paragraphs, and we can have it render as either
<blockquote> or <div>, however the group wants.  Someone may have to help 
me with the CSS properties to get <div> to indent properly, however.
Or, rather than use a <div> we could use <blockquote> but define the
CSS properties for <blockquote> so that it has the desired rendering
characteristics.

BTW, I should have a demo (and possibly beta release) of pmwiki's new 
CSS-based layout scheme in the next day or so.  Comments and suggestions 
will be particularly welcome.

Pm