[pmwiki-users] Re: suggested organizing principles for PmWiki documentation

[Neil Herber]

At 2005-07-26  03:04 PM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
>The discussion about image tags is precisely about how we can
>make it into an author-friendly form.  Authors will want to be
>able to have floating images with borders with captions, and my
>ultimate goal is to make this as easy as writing
>
>     %float framed% http://.../image.gif\\
>     Image Caption
>
>...but in order to make sure we don't end up with a syntax that
>works only for this one specific application, we have to explore
>the design space a bit to make sure we understand the other options
>that authors are going to want to use.

I think I understood this from the outset. My comments about geekiness were 
inspired in part by a conversation I had with a pmwiki-users mailing list 
lurker. He was dismayed by the number of posts filled with CSS and PHP. He 
would like to be *just* a user. However, as you have pointed out, the goal 
of the discussions he was listening in to was to simplify the markup to the 
point where he doesn't ever have to see the letters CSS all together.  ;-)

Maybe the audience differentiation needs to extend to the mailing list, 
too. Was there not a developer's mailing list at one point? That would seem 
to be the place to discuss proposed markups and recipes.

Having said that, I have been on several lists where the tipping point is 
reached and users request splitting the list based on audience. But the 
developers need to get feedback from regular users, and lots of regular 
users want to see that development is ongoing. The seesaw usually tips back 
in favor of one list. I suspect that once V2 is out of beta, this list will 
settle back to more user-oriented questions.


Neil

Neil Herber
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