verbose vs wiki-fast was Re: [pmwiki-users] floating box on the right

Radu radu at monicsoft.net
Fri Mar 25 02:11:35 CST 2005


At 10:39 AM 3/24/2005, dan mcmullen wrote:
>Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>>On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 03:54:01PM +1100, Nathan Jones wrote:
>>>Have you decided on shorthand syntax yet? The >>class<<, >>#id<< 
>>>and >><< (end) option is nice.
>>So far these are the leading candidates.
>
>i'm a bit concerned that '<' & '>' are also used so prominently in 
>html/xml.  i imagine i will be doing a few double takes, particularly as 
>this usage inverts the way html/xml brackets things.  also, this would be 
>the only 'begin-end' markup in PmWiki which does not have a visual 
>symmetry that reflects that behavior.

OK, here's my 2c's worth on the topic.

I had the same acquired reflex when seeing this markup, but then I realized 
that most authors have no idea about syntaxes like xml, html, css, nor do 
they want to. They just want to easily [organize and] express what they 
have in mind. And for that, the reverse encasing actually serves to 
highlight the enclosed element. A bit of a Gestalt grouping effect coming 
from the configuration of things pointing toward the descriptive part 
rather than away from it.

More generally, though:

Verbose markup is all nice and fluffy for casual authors, being more 
explicit. However, it does have its problems:
* if not integrated in a GUI, it opens the way to spelling mistakes
* longer to spell out, takes more space, thus making things marginally slower
* harder to document in reminder notes at the bottom of or on the sides of 
the edit textarea
* the 'explicit' quality is dubious for anyone who doesn't know the English 
language intricacies well enough

There's no wonder that math uses "-" instead of the word "minus"; same with 
other operators. Dad used to tell me that math is a language anyone can 
learn faster than trying to learn many other natural languages. So I 
greatly prefer the original wiki approach of defining a terse, 
punctuation-based markup. Though cryptic at first glance, it's easily 
documentable in sidebars and such, especially coupled with 
consistent-layout layers as in the fixflow skin, and modular GUIs. There is 
of course the added problem of running out of self-explanatory, 
easily-differentiable symbol combinations when trying to include *a lot* of 
functionality, but we have the same problem with verbose markup vocabulary.


Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net) 




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