[pmwiki-users] RFC: Core candidate offerings

[H. Fox]

On 4/2/06, Joachim Durchholz <jo at durchholz.org> wrote:
> Patrick R. Michaud schrieb:
> > It's not at all fair (to me) for people to continually claim that we
> > can simply eliminate the <p class='vspace'></p> tags from PmWiki's
> > output,  until and unless such claims also include an explanation
> > of how we can achieve equivalent vertical spacing effects in the
> > middle of lists and other constructs.  *That* is why the
> > <p class='vspace'></p> tags exist.
>
> I think this discussion is mixing up two unrelated issues.
>
> The first issue is what PmWiki markup should be used to indicate
> vertical space inside list items. PmWiki uses an empty line.
>
> The second is whether to use vspace paragraphs for empty vertical space.
> Or whether to use such vspace paragraphs for *all* vertical space.
>
> On the second issue, I think that vspace paragraphs can be eliminated.
> Outside of lists, it's easy to do using the appropriate margin settings.
> Inside lists, there's always the possibility to plop in two <br /> tags.
> It's even possible to control the size of such a vertical space via CSS:
> put the <br /> tags into a <span> and apply font-size styling.
> Alternatively, list items could be made into sequences of paragraphs.
> Then the normal paragraph styling will take place.
> This approach demonstrates a certain tension between different uses of
> bullet lists:
> 1) If the list simply enumerates short snippets of text, we don't want
> the usual pre-paragraph and post-paragraph margins. The whole list is
> just a way to make a comma-separated list stand out.
> 2) If the list contains paragraphs, we do want the usual pre-paragraph
> and post-paragraph margins. (What I'm writing right now is an example of
> such a bullet list.)
>
> So in summary, I think we actually need two markups (or, rather, two
> variants of the list markups): a "small" one that doesn't add any
> vertical margins (and doesn't offer a way to insert vertical space), and
> a "large" one that treats every list item as a separate paragraph (and
> that may contain additional paragraphs, block markup like [@...@], and
> whatnot).
>
> Now with that structure, the need for vspace paragraphs vanishes.
> "Small" lists don't need facilities for inserting vspace. "Large" lists
> would be generated as
>    <ul>
>      <li>
>        <p>
>          Lorem ipsum...
>        </p>
>      </li>
>      <li>
>        <p>
>          Lorem ipsum...
>        </p>
>      </li>
>      <li>
>        <p>
>          Lorem ipsum...
>        </p>
>      </li>
>    <ul>
> so normal paragraph formatting (including all the style information from
> the CSS file) will take effect. Skin authors will be able to format
> according to what their standard handbooks say, without having to think
> about when there will be a <p class="vspace"></p>.
>
> Just my 2c. HTH.

Excellent, thought-provoking point, Jo.  AMOF it provoked the
following thought that may or may not be compatible with the "small
list / large list" concept.

I have noticed that you can't have a list item start with a paragraph.
 If there's explicit-paragraph markup, then it can be used to say "I
want this list item to start with a paragraph" by combining it with
the list markup.

Current behavior:

* This is a non-paragraph list item.
* This is not a HTML paragraph, even if it's a paragraph in the mind
of the author.

  And this is a paragraph.

Start-list-item-with-a-paragraph markup:

* This is a non-paragraph list item.
*\ This is a paragraph list item.
*\ This is a paragraph, too.

   And another paragraph.

I only bring it up because I have seen that if you write two
paragraphs in a list item, only second one is an XHTML paragraph.  I'm
not sure if it's important that semantic paragraphs are XHTML
paragraphs or not.

Hagan