[pmwiki-users] RFC: Core candidate offerings

[John Rankin]

On Saturday, 1 April 2006 8:14 AM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 12:48:09PM -0600, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
>> > Others have also asked about the possibility of styling
>> > paragraphs with first-line text indents; this is another case
>> > where having an explicit "paragraph" markup would be useful
>> > to avoid the vertical space between paragraphs:
>> > 
>> >     %define=p text-indent:40px apply=p%
>> 
>> So ... what's the problem with making something like %p% part of pmwiki?
>> As I read your #2, \-at-the-beginning-of-line is that markup except
>> you'd have to do the indent separately.
>
>The biggest issue with the idea of %p% as a structural markup is
>that all of the other instances of %% are style markup.  Put another
>way, we don't have equivalent %li%, %td%, %div%, etc.
>
>It can be done easily enough ("any markup line beginning with %p is
>a new paragraph"), but it just seems terribly inconsistent.
>
>Pm

I strongly support Patrick's reason against using %p% to denote a
paragraph. It would be badly inconsistent to use % to denote 
structure in this one case and could start a slippery slope -- 
if it's OK once, it's easier the second time.

But if 
\This is a new paragraph
\\I might expect this to mean something, as other start-of line
markups are repeatable, and \ is repeatable at the end of a line.

So using a \ has issues too.

There is a start-of-line markup that isn't repeatable...

Q:What is the best approach?

So another option might be...
P:Start a new paragraph here. It's easy to type.

This has the advantage of being reminiscent of the typographer's 
pilcrow mark. In its classic usage before word processors put it
at the end, it went at the start of a paragraph in running prose. 
(ref: Elements of Typographic Style, 2nd ed. p283)

I tend to agree with Ben that "a tool is "complete" when there is 
nothing left to take away" and wonder if this should be a cookbook
recipe rather than being part of the core.

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin