[pmwiki-users] Title and PTV undesired behaviour

Hans design5 at softflow.co.uk
Tue Feb 3 10:33:21 CST 2009


Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 3:32:27 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

>> In this case I do not see great harm but only more clarity in
>> changing the default. 

> ...in which case we simply declare that the default is 
> "last wins", which is clear and also doesn't require
> any changes to the code.

Will it be clearer just by a note in the documentation?
An what about the order the various patterns are processed?
The reality right now (the default, but there are no choices)
is that a PTV with same name wins if it comes later in the processing
order, and if it occurs in the later pattern being processed
at a later point. Which PTV pattern is processed last, or in what
order the patterns are processed, depends also on custom additions to
the pattern array. Maybe this can be clearly documented, but such
rules are far from being intuitive for an author.


> If we're to change the default to "first wins", I need
> a really strong case for doing so.  I don't necessarily
> agree that "first wins" is automatically more intuitive -- 
> it's not more intuitive to me.

I don't know what constitutes "a real strong case", I thought I gave
it. Perhaps we need some others to  speak out on this.

I gave several examples of applications and situations in which
"first same name PTV wins" is better. If it is not intuitive, it is
certainly more convenient. The case why a later PTV from the last
pattern processed should win is not intuitive IMHO. I still need to
hear about a good example why this should be desirable.

I think it is far better to change the PTV preference now, as PTVs
are still relatively new. I wish we would not follow the example
of the title markup, which unintuitive behaviour has baffled many
over years, and lead to situations like Tegan describes, where users
are specially advised to leave well alone a title markup at the page
bottom.


  ~Hans




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