[Pmwiki-users] Re: Authors/Users WikiGroup?

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Tue Feb 3 00:24:27 CST 2004


On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 05:02:56PM -0600, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> 
> I'd prefer shorter too, but isn't part of the point that this will
> rarely need to be typed?  Contributors will just put --Scott and that
> will magically turn into --Contributors/{{Scott}}

Allowing "--username" as markup at the end of a line is still just a
proposed addition at the moment--it hasn't necessarily been adopted
(although there seems to be fairly strong support).  Plus, there are 
times when I might want to make reference to another person in the 
middle of a paragraph, as in

   Contributors/{{Scott}} says that Contributors/{{Pm}} is allowed
   to do what Pm wants ala Larry Wall.  

and I might prefer that Contributors be less cumbersome to type.  
But, I don't know that this will occur often, and a WikiAdmin can always 
change the WikiGroup to be something shorter if he/she prefers.

Returning to the proposed "--username" markup itself, a few questions arise:

1.  What should happen by default with "--username" if the page
    Contributors/Username doesn't exist?  Should it become a '?'-link to
    create the page, as with other non-existent WikiWords, or should
    it just be left alone?  (I'll probably make this a configurable
    option, but want to know what the default behavior should be.)

2.  In addition to the example that Reimer Behrends gave of a markup
    alias ("-- That"), the pattern I last proposed would allow names to 
    begin with lowercase letters which can generate even more 
    unintended markup aliases.  For example, with the pattern I
    proposed the following lines in markup would both generate 
    username links:

	ls --all
	grep -r -- pattern - otherfile
    
    This might be okay if we agree that non-existent usernames don't
    produce links, but it bothers me a bit that I was able to come
    up with two non-obvious alias examples so quickly.  Suggestions,
    comments?

3.  I'm not sure how I feel about "[[--username]]" as an author-link
    markup; it just doesn't look quite as natural as "--username".  
    On the other hand, it makes it pretty clear that a link is
    intended.

Finally, in response to one of Christian's messages on this topic,
I'm thinking that the link and/or text that is generated from a signature
markup will be automatically given an attribute of class="authorlink",
instead of requiring a WikiStyle on the line to achieve the same
effect.

Pm



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