[Pmwiki-users] markup musings

[Crisses]

>         [PmWiki | Pm"s favorite wiki engine]

I agree because it's a pain not to be able to make link text with 
quotes etc.

> 5.  Suffix characters immediately following the link should be
>     appended to the link, thus "[[document]]ation" would link to
>     "Document" but display "documentation" as the link text.

neat and reduces redundancy -- though somewhat advanced

> 6.  It's useful to be able to suppress part of the target name when
>     creating the link text.  Currently PmWiki uses '|' for this, as
>     in {{free link|s}},

Which kinda conflicts with something you said about using | to separate 
links and their alternate text :/ i.e. [[free link | free lunch]]

at least enough that it's possibly going to confuse people.

6 is the current behavior.  changing it will be confusing.  Having both 
might be confusing, not sure.

> but another approach would be to use a
>     matched character sequence such as braces or parentheses.  This
>     would also allow suppression somewhere other than the end.
>     Possibilities/examples:
>
>         [text {format}] -- links to TextFormat, displays as "text"
>         [{text} format] -- links to TextFormat, displays as "format"
>         [free link{s}]ing  -- links to FreeLinks, displays as "free 
> linking"

currently {{free link|s}}ing works.

>         [free link(s)]ing  -- same but using parens instead of curly 
> braces

I think a better example is [boot(s) link]s :)

> 7.
>
>

LOL -- forget what you were going to say? :)

> 8.  Perhaps a good way to implement alternate text (images, acronyms,
>     abbreviations) is to simply introduce a new markup for it.  In 
> playing
>     around with the above ideas I came up with [(alt text)], which 
> would add
>     a alt= or title= attribute to whatever immediately preceeds it.  
> Thus:
>
>         Attach:filename.jpg[(my photos)]
>         [W3C | Attach:w3c.jpg][(World Wide Web Consortium)]
>         HTML[(HyperText Markup Language)]
>         [http://www.pmichaud.com/toast][(Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow 
> Torches)]

whew...starting to get very convoluted and confusing.
http://mysite.org/myart.jpg[[alt:Picture of my cat.]]
[[http://mysite.org/myart.jpg]][[alt:Picture of my cat.]]

> 10. It's worth considering the markup choices being made by other wiki
>     engines, if only to make it easy for people to migrate between
>     PmWiki and other engines.  The 600-pound gorilla is Wikipedia 
> (MediaWiki),
>     which has thousands of authors.  This demonstrates that the 
> Wikipedia
>     markup is indeed usable by authors of differing backgrounds.  For
>     reference, here are some of MediaWiki's link markups :
>
>         [[free link]]           -- link to "FreeLink" displays as 
> "free link"
>         [[free link]]s          -- link to "FreeLink" displays as 
> "free links"
>         [[free (link)]]         -- link to "FreeLink" displays as 
> "free"
>         [[free link | clickme]] -- link to "FreeLink" displays as 
> "clickme"

those are ok.  losing the {{free|Link}}  --display as "free"
will break backwards-compatibility.

>     and a choice I *don't* agree with:
>
>         [http://someserver.com/ some server] -- displays as "some 
> server"
>
>     Note the use of single brackets instead of double, and the lack of
>     a delimiter to separate the link text from the target.

I don't mind the lack of delimiter -- that's how it works currently -- 
but I do mind the single bracket.

> 11. It'd be nice to have "wiki engine emulation" modules that enable 
> the
>     use of markup sequences used by other wiki engines, as well as
>     "wiki migration" modules that allow people to easily migrate pages
>     from other wikis to PmWiki.  Fortunately, PmWiki's design and
>     markup language seems to make this a very achievable goal.

That is fine.  If one can switch to/from markups like one can 
presumably switch skins (something that didn't work for me in testing) 
it would be great.

Crisses