[pmwiki-users] wikistyles question

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 08:56:53PM +0000, Hans wrote:
> Friday, November 24, 2006, 7:09:18 PM, Patrick wrote:
> 
> > It should be noted that wikistyles can do quite a bit more
> > than CSS (and are thus not a subset).  In particular, wikistyles
> > allow new styles to be created in terms of existing ones, which
> > CSS doesn't easily allow.
> 
> Can you please give an example for this difference?

Sure.  Essentially, CSS doesn't give me a way to create a new
class that is based on an existing one, or to combine two or
more classes to make a new one.  WikiStyles lets me do that.
Here's an example...

Let's suppose I start with the following CSS classes:

    .frame { border:1px solid #cccccc; padding:4px; background-color:#f9f9f9; }

    .rfloat { float:right; margin-left:0.5em; }

    .lrindent { margin-left:40px; margin-right:40px; }

This gives me the following wikistyled-divs:

    >>frame<<   
        text in a bordered box with a grey background

    >>rfloat<<   
        something right floated

    >>lrindent<< 
        indent something by 40px on left and right margins

I can then easily create the following additional wikistyles:

    %define=rframe frame rfloat%
        >>rframe<< right floats something inside of a frame

    %define=sidenote rframe width=200px%
        >>sidenote<< is a fixed width right-floated frame

    %define=postit sidenote background-color=yellow%
        >>postit<< - a sidenote with a yellow background

    %define=box frame lrindent border="2px dotted blue"%
        >>box<< indents on two sides, with dotted blue border

    %define=tinybox box font-size:smaller%
        >>tinybox<< is same as box, but with a smaller font

Note that I never had to repeat any of properties of an existing 
class -- I could simply say "an rframe contains all of the properties
of frame and rfloat combined" or "a postit contains all of the
properties of sidenote plus an additional background-color property".

What's more, if a skin comes in and redefines one of the
.frame, .rfloat, or .lrindent properties, then those changes
are automatically reflected in the wikistyles I've defined.  If
this had been a pure-CSS implementation, I would then have to go
and adjust my custom styles in order to have them remain in
agreement with the new base class settings.

Pm