[pmwiki-users] Note on tooltip options

Joachim Durchholz jo at durchholz.org
Mon Mar 20 04:52:49 CST 2006


Thomas Lederer schrieb:
> Joachim Durchholz schrieb am 20.03.2006 9:33 Uhr:
>> 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.
> 
> Hello,
> 
> as we are casting votes ;) i would vote for the pipe: |
> 
> Reason: from my point of view it is the _more_ logical choice:
> 
> Standard link: [[http:\\example.com]]
> Link with Title (advanced link): [[http::\\example.com | example title]]

Um... *how* is that more logical?

> However, even though i understand your (Joachim) reasons, i would ask to
> keep both, (if dropping one is really an option) for backwards
> compatibility

Agreed. It shouldn't be removed, only deprecated. (If removal is indeed 
intended.)

An alternative would be writing a script that goes through existing 
wikipages and corrects the syntax - that's simpler than one might think, 
the original markup table as it is constructed within PmWiki can be 
adapted to that purpose (could be done as an ?action=update recipe that 
modified the table entries so that all markup except "|" would be passed 
through unchanged).

 > and for liberty of choice for the users.

Liberty of choice isn't a virtue in this case.

> As for your comment on German keyboards below:
> for me, the | ("pipe") character is a very common one (using Unix,
> Linux, Mac OS X), and on the Unix (Sun) Keyboard, it is "AltGr" (which
> is right from the spacebar) and the "<,>" key (left from the y), same
> seems to be true for all the Windows Notbooks here is the office, and on
> the iBook it is "alt" left from the spacebar and the _normal_ "7" key.
> 
> So actually the | is not better or worse than @ for example.

Sure. That's why I listed @ in the "hate character" set, too :-)

 > What type of keyboard do you use?

Actually I'm using the same.
Some of my misgivings with | are that it's connected to AltGr, which is 
generally a mess on a German keyboard.
For the curious, it remaps the keyboard like this:
  < -> |
  q -> @
  e -> €
  2 -> ²
  3 -> ³
  7 -> {
  8 -> [
  9 -> ]
  0 -> }
  ß -> \
  + -> ~
  m -> µ
The bad thing about AltGr isn't the remapping per se, it's the way the 
mapping is invoked: on the right side, we press AltGr, meaning we don't 
have a right Alt key and can't easily do Alt-Q (or Alt-anything where 
that "anything" is on the left side of the keyboard); alternatively, we 
can press LeftCtrl-LeftAlt to get the same effect as AltGr. (Now we have 
two entirely different ways to invoke the alternate character layer of 
the keyboard, depending on whether the key is to the left or to the 
right. Whoever invented that standard deserves a publish flogging.)

It's also a pain to type "|"; I'm not sure exactly why, but it has 
something to do with having to alternate between different shift keys 
(RightShift, then RightAlt, then RightShift again) - the keypress count 
doesn't seem too bad (six presses).
What's *really* a pain is [@...@]. That translates to:
   LeftCtrl-LeftAlt down
   8
   LeftCtrl-LeftAlt up
   RightAlt down
   q
   RightAlt up
   ...
   RightAlt down
   q
   RightAlt up
   LeftCtrl-LeftAlt down
   8
   LeftCtrl-LeftAlt up
I find it so distracting that I try to use copy&paste [@ and @] wherever 
I can. (Copy&paste works better with @@, which I try to avoid, too. 
Unfortunately, @@ and [@...@] are often needed for the kind of texts I 
usually write, so...)

Well, keyboard issues are an old itch of mine, something I've been 
moaning about for more than a decade now. I don't think the problem will 
go away in my lifetime, so I have largely given up on the issue. (Most 
people don't even blind-type, so I have to face the fact that I'm a 
minority with it.)

Regards,
Jo




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