[pmwiki-users] RFC: Core candidate offerings

[John Rankin]

On Saturday, 1 April 2006 7:03 PM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 04:09:18PM +1200, John Rankin wrote:
>> To summarise (correct me if I'm wrong)...
>> [...]
>> It's proposed that paragraphs would work the same way [as lists]:
>> 
>>     A paragraph.
>> 
>>     A paragraph spaced from the previous one.
>>     "some markup"A paragraph not spaced from the previous one.
>> 
>> The alternative proposal is a blank line=paragraph approach:
>> 
>>     A paragraph.
>> 
>>     A paragraph with default space from the previous one.
>> 
>>     %block some style%A paragraph differently spaced from the previous one.
>> 
>>     A paragraph with default space again.
>
>I should note that this "alternative proposal" as stated in the
>limited form here is in fact PmWiki's status quo, and that the
>proposal for an additional paragraph markup doesn't eliminate 
>this part of the status quo.

I wasn't clear; I meant to communicate "and ... "
>> The alternative proposal would eliminate <p class='vspace'></p> between 
>> consecutive <p> tags (although not between spaced list items) and use css
>> to control default <p> spacing.
>
>I think this forgets the case of:
>
>    Here is a paragraph.
>
>    Here is another paragraph, which leads to a list of items
>    * one
>    * two
>    * three
>    and continues on with more text immediately following the
>list.

I realised after that I *should* have proposed eliminating
<p class='vspace'> in this case also:
   Here is another paragraph, which leads to a list of items
   * one
   * two
   * three

   and continues on with more text immediately following the list.

>
>So, we have to do something slightly more than eliminate the
><p class='vspace'></p> between consecutive paragraphs.  Either
>that or we require the author to write
>
>    Here is another paragraph, which leads to a list of items
>    * one
>    * two
>    * three
>    %block some style% and continues on with more text 
>    immediately following the list.
>
>in order to eliminate the vertical space that would be generated
>by the <p> following the list.  (I admit this example isn't
>the common case, but there are times when I've wanted and
>used exactly this.)

Yes. It's not common, so I don't see this as a significant objection.
>
>> At this stage, my vote goes to the alternative -- it seems tidier all round
>> and requires no new markup.
>
>However, the alternative described above that eliminates vspace
>tags between paragraphs would seem to have the potential of
>breaking page rendering in some existing sites, especially if
>there are custom skins or stylesheets in use that rely on the
>existing output.

Not necessarily. What I had in mind was a new variable,
$HTMLPSpace, set to '' by default by able to be set to
$HTMLVSpace if desired. I envisage that the default <p> 
space setting above would be configurable.

This means no existing sites need be harmed.


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin