[pmwiki-users] leading spaces switch for 2.2.0 (somewhat important)

marc gmane at auxbuss.com
Sun Mar 25 04:48:26 CDT 2007


Tegan Dowling said...
> On 3/24/07, marc <gmane at auxbuss.com> wrote:
> > I fail to understand the difficulty
> > it seems to cause; I haven't encountered anyone who couldn't deal with
> > the syntax once understood - a one sentence, one time thing - no
> > different to '' for emphasis, etc.
> > <snip>
> > Surely, if you don't want the behaviour, then don't add whitespace to
> > the start of your lines.
> 
> I often create wikis for use by people whom I never have an
> opportunity to train.  I provide what training I can to the primary
> users, in the amount of time they are willing to give me, working with
> whatever level of technical proficiency they may or may not have.
> Those trainees then go back to their organizations, or just email the
> password to someone else, and the secondary users log on and click
> edit (if we're all really lucky).  Whenever the trainees or the
> secondary, tertiary, etc users encounter a situation in which the
> plain, unadorned text they enter (or paste in) fails to provide the
> output they (reasonably, based on their experience with Notepad)
> expect, we run the risk of having them declare that wikis are just too
> damned hard to for them to be asked to work with.

With respect, dumbing down features to meet the inability of folk to 
adapt is not a road that I wish to travel.

The feature in question requires as trivial a piece of knowledge to 
circumvent as is possible - one leading space; I would suggest that folk 
who can't cope with that syntax are going to struggle mightily with 
almost all other wiki syntax.

> A simple leading whitespace can be all the difference between
> successful adoption and the failure of a new wiki, if it rubs the
> wrong person the wrong way.

Well, they really should be less sensitive!

Nevertheless, I'm not seeing this behaviour at all. I work globally, and 
this past week I've been in Asia where I have a few clients who have 
adapted to PmWiki in house with ease. As it happens, I've suggested 
PmWiki to a few voluntary and sports groups while socialising, and the 
uptake has been terrific - folk love that they can alter content 
themselves without an intermediary "webmaster". A lot of these folk 
don't speak a European language, and some of them don't fully understand 
the Latin alphabet, yet no-one has been in the least bit fazed by the 
leading space syntax.

To me, this is a solution looking for a problem. I'm completely 
unconvinced that the change is necessary.

-- 
Cheers,
Marc




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