[Pmwiki-users] Re: Need help with markup

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:

> Random stuff ...
> 
> line-oriented tables:
> 	# The first item
> 	# Here is a table of the second item options[[tablestart]]
> 	[[tablerow]]
> 	Column1 of the second item
> 	
> 	Column2 of the second item
> 	
> 	Column3 of the second item
> 	[[tableend]]
> 	# The third item

Veto.  This wouldn't allow paragraphs in table cells.

> [[||]] column separator:
> 	# The first item
>         # [[tablestart]][[tablerow]]Column1 of the second
>           item[[||]]Column2 of the second item[[||]]Column3 of the
>           second item[[tableend]]
>         # The third item

Has potential but syntatically it sucks.  Also, attributes start to
look really ugly:

	[[tablestart]][[tablerow]]Column1[[|| align=right]]Column 2,
        right aligned[[|| align=center]]Column 3, centered[[tableend]]

> What happens when you mix [[tablerow]] and [[tablecol]]?
> 	# The first item
>         # [[tablestart]][[tablerow]]Column1 of the second
>           item[[||]]Column2 of the second item[[||]]Column3 of the
>           second item[[tablecol]]Where does this column go?[[tableend]]
>         # The third item

I would think that [[tablecol]] == [[||]] for the examples you give
above, unless you had intended a different semantic meaning for [[||]].
Thus the "Where does this column go?" in your example above would be the fourth column.

Also, I think in your markup you're implying that tables could be the
body of bullet/numbered lists; I'm not quite certain that this will actually
function--certainly it wouldn't if the table cells had more than simple
text in them.  To do that would require a much more sophisticated parser
for PmWiki than I'm willing to implement at the moment.

Perhaps this just implies that I shouldn't claim the [[table*]] tags
as being inline elements, even if the parser can handle multiple [[table*]]
tags on a single line.

Pm