[pmwiki-users] PmWiki 'Basic Editing' Documentation suggestion

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Mon Jul 23 12:55:20 CDT 2007


On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 11:37:07AM -0600, Nelson Ingersoll wrote:
> Please forgive me for being new.  I'm not normally this perfectly ignorant.
> 
> I'm struggling with simple markups.  So I refer to the 'Basic Editing' wiki
> and see things which I try.  Unfortunately there are problems.  These
> problems befuddle me as I think I have read the documentation correctly and
> am applying the markups correctly.  Until suddenly I had an epiphany of
> understanding.  *Blank lines are your friends!  Use them often!*
> 
> Advice I would toss out to New Users like me:
> 
>     If something isn't displaying the way you think it should
>     and the markups all look good, put some *blank lines*
>     into your page!  Not the displayable blank lines using
>     markups '\\' and '\\\'.  Rather, blank lines like
> 
>     this and that
> 
>     In some ways it is helpful to think of a blank line as a
>     terminator of the last markup instruction.

I think the more important message is that authors should use
'\\' and '\\\' very sparingly -- i.e., only when the author needs
to insert a blank line in the middle of a paragraph or heading.

Otherwise, the proper way to generate vertical whitespace in
PmWiki is to use blank lines.

I notice a lot of authors using \\ to generate blank lines even
in normal text, and I'm not sure what leads people to believe that
necessary.

Borrowing from your example:

> -----
> Markup that looks good to a novice; '''AND IS!'''
> -----
> 
> >>center<<
> [+++Centered Three+++]
> >><<
> \\
> 
> !!Heading Three\\
> 
> [[Path:pub/doc3.pdf | Document3]]\\\

None of the \\'s are necessary here -- omit them and you get the
correct results.

> ----
> 
> >>center<<
> [+++Centered Four+++]
> >><<
> 
> !!Heading Four\\
> 
> [[Path:pub/doc4.pdf | Document4]]\\

Same here -- the \\'s can (and should) be omitted.

Pm



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