verbose vs wiki-fast was Re: [pmwiki-users] floating box on the right
Radu
radu at monicsoft.net
Fri Mar 25 02:11:35 CST 2005
At 10:39 AM 3/24/2005, dan mcmullen wrote:
>Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>>On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 03:54:01PM +1100, Nathan Jones wrote:
>>>Have you decided on shorthand syntax yet? The >>class<<, >>#id<<
>>>and >><< (end) option is nice.
>>So far these are the leading candidates.
>
>i'm a bit concerned that '<' & '>' are also used so prominently in
>html/xml. i imagine i will be doing a few double takes, particularly as
>this usage inverts the way html/xml brackets things. also, this would be
>the only 'begin-end' markup in PmWiki which does not have a visual
>symmetry that reflects that behavior.
OK, here's my 2c's worth on the topic.
I had the same acquired reflex when seeing this markup, but then I realized
that most authors have no idea about syntaxes like xml, html, css, nor do
they want to. They just want to easily [organize and] express what they
have in mind. And for that, the reverse encasing actually serves to
highlight the enclosed element. A bit of a Gestalt grouping effect coming
from the configuration of things pointing toward the descriptive part
rather than away from it.
More generally, though:
Verbose markup is all nice and fluffy for casual authors, being more
explicit. However, it does have its problems:
* if not integrated in a GUI, it opens the way to spelling mistakes
* longer to spell out, takes more space, thus making things marginally slower
* harder to document in reminder notes at the bottom of or on the sides of
the edit textarea
* the 'explicit' quality is dubious for anyone who doesn't know the English
language intricacies well enough
There's no wonder that math uses "-" instead of the word "minus"; same with
other operators. Dad used to tell me that math is a language anyone can
learn faster than trying to learn many other natural languages. So I
greatly prefer the original wiki approach of defining a terse,
punctuation-based markup. Though cryptic at first glance, it's easily
documentable in sidebars and such, especially coupled with
consistent-layout layers as in the fixflow skin, and modular GUIs. There is
of course the added problem of running out of self-explanatory,
easily-differentiable symbol combinations when trying to include *a lot* of
functionality, but we have the same problem with verbose markup vocabulary.
Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net)
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