[pmwiki-users] skin design and the searchbox

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 02:43:00PM +0000, Hans wrote:
> Tuesday, March 22, 2005, 2:27:32 PM, Patrick wrote:
> > Hmmm.  Probably not, at least not as written here.  The word "var" 
> > doesn't have much meaning to an author (who typically doesn't know 
> > PmWiki internals).  It needs to be called something else.
> 
> variable?
> var was just short for variable.

Authors don't think in terms of "variables".  That's why I still 
think we should look at this in terms of capabilities.  Perhaps
"enabled"?

   (:if enabled smallsearchbox:)
   (:if enabled rightmenu:)
   (:if enabled jumpbox:)

Skins and other modules can then set variables to indicate
available capabilities.  We could make the variables either global or
entries in an array of some sort, or a combination of the two.
Personally I prefer the array approach, as it's easier to set multiple
values.

> Using condition 'match' is not very obvious for authors either I
> think.  

I totally agree; it's another of those cases where someone needed it 
and I went ahead and placed it in the core primarily as a useful 
example for developing other conditionals.  In general, I'd say 
that there hasn't been a whole lot of thought behind conditional 
markup in PmWiki; my goal was to build the basic framework and 
leave the rest to be developed as specific needs were identified 
(e.g., as we're doing now with the notion of an "enabled" conditional).

Pm