[Pmwiki-users] Re: %class=something% (was Re: Extending ...)

[Andres Yver]

On Tuesday, March 2, 2004, at 11:54 PM,  
Pmwiki-users-request at pmichaud.com wrote:

> I'm not intending to pick on Andres Yver here, but his message at
> http://pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users_pmichaud.com/2004-February/ 
> 003172.html
> exactly illustrates this principle, and he's hardly a new author.  :-)

lol!
I glanced  at the markup on PmWiki.EditQuickReference and thought it  
was regexps!

Seriously though, markup needs to look simple, and it's rules must be  
easy to remember.

That's why we were talking about keeping div and span functionality  
within %style%, and having a simple ruleset.

Nathan Jones comments:

> Just having a closing % is not enough to make a div:
>
> %style% If there is a closing tag here;% then you want a span, since  
> you
> wouldn't want a line break (caused by div) in the middle.

Yes, a span. You'd need a closing % at the end of the sentence or  
paragraph(s) to make a div.

>
> %style% Should this%
> be a span or a div?

same as first example.

> So, perhaps it would need to be a % on a line by itself:
>
> %style% This a block that will
> be enclosed in a <div>
> %

That makes sense, and it helps people think in terms of block style  
attributes enclosing an area of the page. You could extend this to the  
opening style tag as well to be consistent. It's easier to read your  
content when it's not on the same line as your markup.

%style=.richard%
my content goes here.
%

generates a div of class richard.

how do we define the classes? We'd need an stylesheet sidebar page  
which contained some predefined classes and also those classes named in  
the document. Editing the values for the class changes the css for that  
document.
Stylesheets are familiar to people that have worked with word  
processors and graphics programs.

To get it closer to wysiwyg editing, you could have the stylesheet page  
preview the document at each class edit.
Perhaps we could toggle edit mode between  markup and preview. You add  
the tags to the markup, toggle to preview, edit the styles.
How about user highlighting of content text and clicking on an existing  
predefined style like bold or on a user defined style like richard to  
set the appropriate markup?
Site administrators could define set styles and disable user editing of  
the stylesheet if they wanted to maintain, say, a corporate look.

Standard disclaimer applies about not being a programmer, no idea  
whether it will hopelessly bloat the code, slow things down, eat gobs  
of memory, otherwise wreak havoc, etc.

andres