[Pmwiki-users] Re: Top 10 (digest 9 vol 27)

J. Meijer commentgg
Sat Mar 13 06:36:33 CST 2004


Greg, thanks for replying to my questions. Your tip regarding offline
browsing is apparently working perfectly. Great. My browser is IE6 (Avant
Browser) so this should be important to many users.

About the other points:

1. About {{link}{link-text}{alt-text}} syntax. [[<url> link-text]] does a
subset of what I'm suggesting, while free-links do another. I proposed the
{{link}{link-text}{alt-text}} syntax because then all links (can) adhere to
the same slightly more verbose format: first comes the link (which can be
omitted if the next element is an image), then the link-text (which can be
an image), then an additional descriptive text (alt-text or title-text). I
am
supposing this syntax extends the freelink syntax with no downsides. It
also gives freedom to add additional markup such as width=50
height=70 markup with no special syntax at all.
As with any change, compatibility is an issue, not a technical one but
primarily users will feel incompatible. The technical aspect is a migration
issue.
Anyway, I suppose that indifferently of the merits of the proposed syntax,
now is the time to decide syntax-issues. Or else the syntax-monster will
bite.

2. Markup for adding alttext and links to images. This would be limited to
alttext and links alone, i.e. no other properties can be set. I imagined an
upload page with a table listing the files available, with alttext,
targetlink and an edit button. If one would like to modify a row, a popup
could present a form for the row, allowing editing of its elements. No
markup required.
About the problem of an associated alttext/link being global: yes, it is
risky, because power is temptation. Having page-revisions helps, but the
upload page seems an exception. Perhaps edits should be restricted to the
person who uploaded the file and obviously the admin. Maybe registered users
when pmwiki grows up to support that feature (please don't use a database)..
Anyway, it is an option and when limited to the user that uploaded the file
a very fair option!
Remark: I did not succeed in making uploading work yet so I don't even know
how the page looks now.

4. About an extension to '----'. I intended to stir your thinking. The
underlying css projection I think of as an implementation issue. Users
unaware of technical details think of ---- as a section-marker. And yes(?),
this style would disallow mid-sentence markup-changes, the price for using a
wiki?
----sara seems to indicate a natural section style-change, but is in need of
a stopcode other then ---- so I went with:
---->sara and stopcode:
---->
Possibly not a good choice.

6. Translation. This is a very practical suggestion. The issue is not about
pmwiki displaying a phrase in some language, it is about creating a
quick-start for a translation. So you know what the *full content* to be
translated is, so you can easily see what *has been* translated and *what
not*. Because you want to get up and running quickly you translate only the
global phrases, then worry about datailed explanations. Really, this is a
serious usability issue :-)
I think I could put in the effort and compile an example set of
PmWikiXX.????? files, but it would always be limited to the current version.

8. Offline wiki: I hope to learn some php and add some code/experiments
myself. XML-RPC: this is exciting news.

My internet access is few and far in between at the moment, which helps to
explain why I packed things in a Top 10.

jm

  ----- Original Message -----
  1. [Greg] {{ }} is for free-links.  Any new meaning of that markup would
be confusing
  and would break quite a few existing wikis.  (I know it would screw mine
up)
  Besides to use most of what you want try the [[ ]] markup. i.e.
  {{www.patrickmichaud.com}{PmWiki author}} should actually be
  [[http://www.patrickmichaud.com PmWiki Author]]
  2. [Greg] It would, however make it very easy for another user to redefine
that
  default text or link to something else.  Effectively changing the entire
  site at once.
  If you have a couple of images that you always use.. Like a company logo
or
  a "NEW!" marker, etc.  You could define a custom markup using
  $InlineReplacements in config.php
  2. [pm] Propose a mechanism/markup--i.e., how it should look to an author.
  4. [Greg]
  ----- creates the <hr /> markup which is used for horizontal lines.
  ---> is used to indent a section text.
  I also think you're confused about what the [[div]] markup is intended
for.
  It's meant to allow a section of a page to be reformatted via a cascading
  style sheet.
  6. [pm] This is PmWiki's default behavior--if a translation of a phrase
doesn't
  exist, the English one is used (actually, the key phrase is used as-is).
  8. [Greg] You can install Apache and PHP on your windows box, however
syncronizing
  changes between the "development" machine and the "production" machine is
  tricky.  For now I'm manually tar-ing up and copying the files in wiki.d
to
  the remote server.  Once I finish adding XML-RPC support for pmwiki this
may
  be easier.






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