[pmwiki-users] PmWiki DocumentationGuidelines

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 05:12:59PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 03:13:08PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> > >
> > > Side question: Is there a way to get monospaced text with normal
> > > word wrapping?
> >
> > Short answer 1:  @@...@@ is inline text, monospaced, and word wraps.  But it doesn't honor line breaks in the markup.
> 
> Are you sure?  This
> 
>     http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Test/MonospaceWordWrap
> 
> doesn't wrap in Firefox or MSIE.

Oops, you're right.  The reason it doesn't wrap is that PmWiki
adds a   code { white-space:nowrap; } in the CSS output; this was
done in response to a specific request and a short discussion on
the list (I forget which).  

I think we could make an argument that @@...@@ should wrap, while
[@...@] would not wrap.  Essentially I'd have [@...@] generate
HTML tags with a "nowrap" class or something like that in them,
and <code> could then be left alone.

> > Another approach that has been tried is to have PmWiki directly
> > word-wrap any <pre> text at a fixed width (the (:markup:) directive
> > does this), the downside being that the width of lines has to be
> > fixed so that it shows line breaks even when more room is available.
> 
> If the lines could wrap in the normal manner, that would be less of an issue.

Yes, but I haven't found a way to reliably do this in browsers.
I also haven't looked in six months, so it might be worth another
investigation into what can be done.  In the past I also experimented
somewhat with the CSS "overflow" property, which theoretically should
allow long lines to extend beyond the right side of the page without
making it wider, but as I recall that didn't work reliably in some
major browsers.

> (A "hard wrap" is two lines in the clipboard and a "soft wrap" is one
> line in the clipboard, correct?)

I believe so.

> > > Despite the fact that more than half (more like three quarters[1]) of
> > > the world seems to be using a 1024x768 or smaller display, PmWiki is
> > > oriented toward a larger display area.
> >
> > I disagree; I've always tended to test and design PmWiki for 800x600
> > screens.  Some of the *documentation* may have been written in such
> > a way that it doesn't display well on 800x600, but AFAICT that's not
> > PmWiki's (or my) doing.
> 
> I suppose I was just referring to the docs and the edit form.  That
> said, I wouldn't suggest reducing the textarea's height *that* much.
>
> I like the tall textarea, but one or two fewer lines wouldn't hurt and
> for 1024 and smaller displays the difference would be significant.

Now reduced from 25 lines to 23 lines.

> > > While I'm at it, is there a way (say in skin.php) to limit the width
> > > of (:markup:) blocks?  The default is just a bit too wide.  I'd like
> > > to avoid this effect:
> > >
> > >     http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Test/Markup2?skin=lean
> > >
> > > Note that the (new?) default width is also too wide to fit in the
> > > viewport of an 800x600 browser window using the default skin.
> >
> > I increased the width of (:markup:) to 80 chars this past week;
> > obviously that's too much, so I'll take it back down to 70.
> 
> 75 seems perfect.

Sold, at 75!