markup quick ref (was: Re: [Pmwiki-users] pmwiki.org converted to 2.0.devel27)

[Neil Herber]

At 2004-11-30  08:43 PM -0500, Bronwyn Boltwood is rumored to have said:
> > Consider a MarkupQuickReference page showing examples of all markup
> > effects, while hiding the markup to produce them.
> >
> > If an author mouses over a particular effect, the markup to
> > generate that effect displays as a tool tip. For example, if
> > an author mouses over superscript (which is rendered as
> > superscript text), the tooltip is '^superscript^'
>
>Personally, I'd find that saved space at the expense of time.  I vote
>for the Instiki-style two column method someone else suggested, with
>markup --> effect.  When I'm busy typing an edit, I want information
>at a glance instead of needing to mouse over something.
>
>Bronwyn

I was the smart guy who suggested the Instiki-style, 2-column guide. I even 
tried to create such a guide and was prepared to upload it to the PmWiki 
site, but I ran into severe problems - probably due to my lack of 
understanding of PmWiki markup.

The main difficulty is that some of the markup relies on the "absolute" 
position on the page, so it becomes impossible to put an example into a two 
column table. For example the following code:

||this markup||does this||
||[=''italics''=]||''italics''||

works just fine, but it fails miserably when I get to:

||this markup||does this||
||[=!!Heading 2=]||!!Heading 2||

Because the rendering engine wants to see the exclamation points at the 
start of the line.

Even swapping the column order (effect||markup) does not work with a table 
because both the table markup and the heading markup "want" to be at the 
start of the line.

The only way I can think of to do this is with an included page marked up 
in HTML that renders the correct way. Is that possible? I haven't tried yet 
(think I will now!!).

I also tried the "markup" tag as follows:
(:markup:) [=
!Level 1
!!Level 2
!!!Level 3=]

That works, but I find it consumes too much space - both vertically and 
horizontally.

Are there any secret codes that I can try?


Neil

Neil Herber
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