[Pmwiki-users] markup musings - notation idea

[Jonathan Scott Duff]

On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 10:53:50PM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 09:42:00PM -0500, John Feezell wrote:
> > Perhaps a depth concept would help in solving this problem.
> > 
> > Let one bar "|" mark the beginning of "link text"
> > Let two bars "||" mark the beginning of "alt text"
> > Case 7:
> > [[acronyms || alt text]]
> > [[HTML || HyperText Markup Language]]
> 
> Excellent suggestion.

Indeed!

[deletia] 
> Case 3 - suppressing part of the target in the link text
> [[target (hidden)]]
>   [[install(ation)]]
>   [[documentation (index)]]
>   [[WikiGroup(s)]]
>   [[text formatting rules(#bullets)]]
>   [[(Attach:)file.doc]]

I like that last one.

[more deletia]
> But if this is the case, then the markup for adding an alt= attribute
> to an inline image ought to be [[|Attach:filename.gif || alt text]], 
> similar to an acronym/abbreviation, since [[Attach:filename.gif || alt text]] 
> would normally be how one adds title= attributes to a link.
> Somehow it seems "wrong" to me that the very common action of 
> specifying an image's alt= attribute is more complex (albeit by one
> character) than the less common action of specifying a title= 
> attribute for links.

Though I agree with the "wrongness" of it, I think you should keep it
this way for consistency sake. (at least that's what my tired brain is
telling my right now :)  You could also provide another syntax for
alt-only like  [[Attach:filename.gif ^ alt text]] rather than
[[|Attach:filename.gif || alt text]]

> Again, excellent suggestion, and I'll greatly appreciate comments
> from others.

It gets my vote.

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at pobox.com