[pmwiki-users] facilititate customistion using CSS for simple tables

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 09:22:19PM +1300, Simon wrote:
> I'd like to solicit votes for http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00638
> 
> Description: To facilititate customistion using CSS could the table tag
> generated for simple tables markup please have a class added to it. eg
> 
>  <table class="wikisimpletable"

On PITS:00638, you added the comment:

    ... This would simply be a default class added in addition to any a user 
    declares in a class= parameter. ...

The problem is that this isn't actually "simple" nor "straightforward".  
PmWiki doesn't have an easy way to put a default class "in addition to 
any a user declares" -- as things currently exist it can either use a 
hard-coded one, fall back to a default, or accept the class declaration 
provided by the user.  There's not a simple mechanism for combining classes 
(which, btw, I personally find to be a serious flaw in the design of CSS itself).

So, add "a default class in addition to a user-declared class" would
actually require substantial code changes to the simple table markup.
It also would remove the ability for users to create a simple table
without having the default class in it.  So, what you're describing 
is not at all a trivial change, and does impact existing wikis.

It's entirely possible for a wiki administrator to set a default
class explicitly in config.php (the PITS comments incorrectly omit
the required [0] subscript):

    $BlockMarkups['table'][0] = "<table class='wikisimpletable' width='100%'>";

This sets the default class for any simple tables that get generated,
although it can be overridden by any user-supplied class.  It only affect
simple tables -- it doesn't change the class settings for advanced tables
or other tables that PmWiki generates.

Having looked at it a bit further, I don't have a big problem with
the above $BlockMarkup value being set as the default in stdmarkup.php,
as long as we're clear that any user-supplied class= attribute continues
to override the default class attribute, and is not in addition
to it.

Pm