[Pmwiki-users] right and center alignment

[Steven Leite]

Thanks for you comments.  I completely agree with the whole idea behind the
original WikiWiki concept.  I think you might have misunderstood what I was
saying.

> Funny that you said that, one of the ideas behind the original WikiWiki
> concept was to step away from HTML markup:

Re-reading my comment, you'll see I said:

> IF we are going to teach people markup .... then we might as well ... or
something that RESEMBLES HTML.

So I was not actually suggesting that we use HTML.

What I was really saying is,

I think PmWiki is introducing too many special %tags% for formatting and
styles, and it's looking more and more like HTML, and less and less like
simple Wiki markup; so, is for THAT reason that I made the comparison and
inference to using markup that RESEMBLES HTML.

Sorry for not being more clear the first time around.

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>>As for (illegally placed) multiple tags such as %align=center%
>> %align=right% appearing on the same line, searching for a
>> open-and-close tag for the first instance, and stripping out
>> any illegal tags completely would solve that.

> You do realize, of course, that regular expressions cannot do general
> recursion,

I wasn't thinking of anything as sophisticated as recursive functionality.
It's a simple matter to locate the opening-and-closing tags and then running
the results through some function (depending on what you are trying to
accomplish).

> so a proper implementation of what you are asking for is more
> than a little hack, not to say, reinvention of a wheel in a particularly
> wicked squarish configuration ;-)

If you were trying to confuse me with all that talk about inventions,
wheels, and wicked squarish configurations, it worked!

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And to kill two birds with one stone, I'm also going to reply to some of
Pm's comments here also:

>>Actually, I've always taken the position that this is a slippery-slope

I totally agree.  I actually do like the idea of dispensing with HTML, and
having an alternative (and simpler) method to produce nice looking pages.  I
just don't see it happening at the moment.

>>So, I'm continuing to avoid the use of HTML-like sequences in the markup
>>until the benefits clearly outweigh some of the costs.

I think we are rapidly approaching that point with all these new markup
ideas.  Especially the ones described like:  "The markup is only recognized
if it's the first thing to appear on a line, and then it only affects that
line."  Seem's like a monkey-wrench solution to achieve something that HTML
already does, except it doesn't do it quite as well (see below):

>>If we introduce "special" tags that look like HTML but really aren't,
>>we're doing many naive authors a disservice by fooling them into writing
>>something that looks like HTML but really isn't.

I feel that's exactly what we're doing with many of the %tags%.  It's just
seems wrong to teach users this proprietary system for styles, colors, and
text alignment when these things already exist in HTML.

Note, I didn't mention tables because I think the PmWiki method for (simple)
table creation is superior to HTML - it's also more intuitive and user
friendly.  I would never want to try and explain to a new author how to use
<tr> and <td> tags for tables!

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>>Other problems with open/closing tags in markup:
>> 1. What to do when users forget closing tags, especially if tags
>>   otherwise nest
>>  2. How to detect/correct incorrectly nested tags and turn them
 >>    into legal (X)HTML  (e.g., <b><i>text</b></i>)

Again, when the user does a preview or a save they will see the page and can
fix it?  Seems simpler than programming a bunch of what if possibilities
(not that it couldn't also be done).

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Phew .. done!

Cheers!

Steven Leite