<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Sep 24, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Marc Cooper wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">No, they are typographical tools; in the sense that they render content<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">to the author's demands. Wiki markup is not a text formatting tool;<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">although text formatting is a subset of what it does.</FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I strongly disagree. Pm Philosophy #1 declares PmWiki an authoring tool. I've been using it as a writing tool for quite some time, well before 1.0, and always consider it an authoring and writing instrument, not a typographical tool. It supports paragraphs and publishes them to the web. Everything else is gravy. Except keeping bad people from ruining my good work :)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Now -- the fact that I've been a writer since age 11 is probably why I consider it first and foremost a writing tool. Computers came later, when I was 15 and begged my mom for a word processor cartridge for my C-64. I've been auto-typing instead of auto-writing ever since. At 15 I became a programmer, at 22 I started doing graphic design, typography, typesetting, etc. Before that I couldn't care less what it looked like as long as my words were being recorded, now I couldn't care less as long as my words are being recorded and published. :)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>It's when I'm doing anything else that I come out of the authoring mindset and craft recipes for PmWiki, help out people on the list, or consider extending the functionality of my own wikis. I'm active at the moment because I have a client paying me to craft a wiki. That will feed me so I may write another day ;)</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">There is a difference between typography and text formatting.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">Yes -- and typography (under the definition of the look of text, or the forming of lead plates used on a printing press if you want to be archaic) is not really what wikis do best. Over the years, and with the invention of CSS(yay!) wikis do it better & better, but first they're an authoring and collaboration environment. I don't care if the paragraph is indented in 12pt helvetica or full justified in times new roman (eww!).</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">CSS is for typography. HTML and wikis should be for function over format. Call a header a header, and let the designer worry about whether the header is bold and blue or not. The lovely part is that, if it's done right, you get a consistent "brand image" -- i.e. a look & feel that tells the viewer they're still on the correct website.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">Perhaps the word you mean is typesetting?</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">and appeal to people who don't carefully distinguish between<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">content and form (because they don't have to), and for these, making<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">line breaks insignificant is just a pain in the a**.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">You are making a sweeping generalisation in the first part of your<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">sentence that is incorrect. Clearly, there are folk who have simple,<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">basic needs that use wikis, just as there are those who wish to use them<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">in more demanding ways.</FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>I definitely agree.<BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">The reason I used that example was to invite you to imagine the tasks<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">involved in typesetting content of the scale of a book - just a novel,<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">not a technical book, which is far more demanding. If you can't imagine<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">it, then download an example from Gutenberg and try it. You'll soon find<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">the tools that you need and why line break = line break makes your task<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">unimaginably awful.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">I agree with that case. I'm not looking forward to trying to typeset my poems to the wiki software. There are times when linebreak=linebreak is certainly helpful. Typing \\ at the end of every line could easily drive me crazy and YES I might build a script to help me out... or block out a whole entire wiki area with a GroupHeader (:linebreaks:)</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">. But that is something entirely different to attributing<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">semantic meaning to a line break. Once you do that, you can't undo it.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">That's the heart of the problem. That's why it's the wrong thing to do.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">This comment baffles me. We're in a dynamic & fluid medium -- why is it that you can't undo something? "attributing semantic meaning to a linebreak...you can't undo it" -- how a linebreak is treated by a program doesn't do anything irreversible to the semantics involved.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px">I almost wish there were a checkbox on the authoring page, it would remember your preferences, and you could turn whether it ignores linebreaks on & off. The problem is whether it would reformat the pre-parsed text -- that would be a mess if I put in a poem and used the wrong setting :)</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 20.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">Other than WYSINWYG apps, writing tools don't behave in this way.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">Which tools? I haven't encountered one of this kind in years, so I'm<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">genuinely curious.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">All typographical tools - any half decent editor can, of course, be<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">configured to behave any which way. As I said, don't confuse text<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Comic Sans MS">editing with typography.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV>I'm not sure where you're coming from. InDesign/Illustrator/Quark? Vim/vi? LaTeX? I think the term typography is really throwing me off after being a graphic designer....</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Crisses</DIV></BODY></HTML>