[pmwiki-users] Note on tooltip options

[Joachim Durchholz]

Neil Herber schrieb:
> Other than the fact that it might break existing markup, I would say 
> get rid of the [[ Link Text -> http://www.example.com ]] markup 
> altogether.

Sorry for jumpin in late, and I have to confess I haven't followed this 
thread. Let me just cast my vote for the -> syntax: it's far more 
intuitive than the | syntax.
Two reasons:
1) (The important one) It's better when authors first think about what 
their readers will read as link text, then about where the link should 
point to. The link target can be looked up if wording the link text is 
so difficult that the URL gets "swapped out" of the author's mind; if 
the link is complicated, I tend to forget what I wanted to write, and 
since the flow of words was broken by having to write the URL, the text 
I'm coming up with later is usually not as good. (I have switched to -> 
exclusively for this reason.)
2) (A less important one) The -> arrow nicely underlines the fact that 
the link text is referring to the URL. The | syntax has no such 
intuitive meaning; I found it awkward to remember that link text should 
come after URL. (Well, maybe not so unimportant: such points are 
relevant for newbies.)

If dropping one of the link syntaxes is ever a real consideration, 
please, drop the | one. I always found it too ugly to live.

> It never made sense to me, the GUI link buttons in the edit window
> don't generate it, and we have a perfectly good markup that does the
> same job using one fewer character. (I never use it as a result.)

On a US keyboard, you're right.

On a German one (or actually for most European countries), it's 
Left-Ctrl Left-Alt 'y', which is horrid. (Right-Ctrl/Right-Alt keys 
don't work for that. Yeah, I know it's braindead. No, I don't know what 
idiots defined that standard; everybody is sticking to it for no good 
reason at all. Actually all of @|{[]}\~ are "hate characters" because 
typing them on a European keyboard requires a considerable amount of 
prestidigitation, which disrupts any attempt at ten-finger blind-typing.)

Regards,
Jo