[pmwiki-users] leading spaces switch for 2.2.0 (somewhat important)

[marc]

Kathryn Andersen said...
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 07:37:52AM +0100, marc wrote:
> > Kathryn Andersen said...
> > > On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 02:34:52PM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 10:48:26AM +0100, marc wrote:
> > > > > Tegan Dowling said...
> > > > > > On 3/24/07, marc <gmane at auxbuss.com> wrote:
> > > > It's even less obvious that something as small as a single leading
> > > > space is the problem.  When we explain the reason for the long lines
> > > > to authors, it somewhat makes sense, but at the same time this feels
> > > > to them like this is a "programmer's feature" and so perhaps the wiki
> > > > really isn't for them.
> > > 
> > > I'm wondering if there could be a compromise: rather than having a
> > > *single* leading space trigger preformatting, there could be a certain
> > > number of leading spaces required, like four or eight. One or two spaces
> > > are likely to be accidental, eight spaces, less so.
> > 
> > Two would be okay, imo, three at most, but eight would be far too 
> > cumbersome.
> 
> Agreed that eight would be probably too cumbersome, but IMHO three is
> too few.  So at least four is a compromise.

I was thinking that three was a reasonable compromise.

> > Since spaces seem to be the issue - I think, although I still fail to 
> > see the cause of the problem <Is this another issue caused by Word-
> > itis?>
> 
> No, I think it tends to be caused by cut-and-paste, where something has
> one single space (or two) and gives preformatting where the person did
> not intend to do so.

Okay <shakes head in disbelief>
 
> > not the issue as described by Pm - a trivial markup would be 
> > okay, say, ";; " (semicolon, semicolon, space), something that can be 
> > achieved quickly (e.g. a non-shifted, repeated key) and doesn't require 
> > closure. This is still a pain, though, to be honest, for other reasons. 
> 
> No, I'd rather have spaces;

Oh, me too.

> if I had to use markup, I'd rather go with
> the existing [@ @] markup.

Okay, but I absolutely do not want to have to close this particular 
block.

> Putting ;; in front of all preformatted text
> just seems far too ugly to me.  Spaces are good because they're already
> used in other contexts (mediawiki, txt2html) to indicate preformatted
> text.

Sure. So, no change would be best :-)

> Though note that txt2html, at least, defaults to 5 spaces to trigger
> preformatting (and this number can be changed with an option).

That's simply unworkable; or, more precisely, folk would be looking to 
change it as soon as it was implemented.

-- 
Cheers,
Marc