[wiki-standards] Re: proposed wiki markup standard - font changes & lists

[Filippo A. Salustri]

Hi,

I think one of the underlying issues whenever we think about wiki syntax is 
how it will work (or not) for users.

And part of this has to do with how important wysiwyg is.  If, for instance, 
we all agreed that wysiwyg was essential, then it doesn't really matter what 
the syntax is to the user cuz he'll never see it.

But so long as there are wikis that use textarea-based way of editing, then we 
should consider how the syntax renders to editors when they see it in 
(usually) fixed width font in a textarea.

In my wiki, I do DL lists with >= 1 newlines between the term and def
? Term
: def

because it looks better (to me anyways) in the textarea when it's being 
edited.  That is, it makes the term and the definition parts more distinct 
visually in the textarea.  It also gets around a nagging oddity among (my 
wiki's) users.  That is, putting everything on 1 line, like this:

   ? Term: definition

makes users wonder where the : went in the rendering.  Of course you can do

   ? Term:: definition

which should render only 1 of the :, but that looks silly, compared to

   ? Term:
   : definition

Anyways, the point is not how I do DLs, but that I think about what the 
'rendering' is in the textarea.

Just 2 cents.
Cheers.
Fil Salustri

Alex Schroeder wrote:
> Chuck Smith schrieb:
>> http://www.i3g.hs-heilbronn.de/attach/WikiMarkupStandard/wikistandard1.pdf
> 
> Regarding the proposal in this PDF document:
> 
> I also prefer double square brackets instead of single square brackets
> because (rarely) single square brackets are used in text, usually for
> manual footnotes, edit comments, etc.
> 
> Some wikis use !WikiWord to prevent automatic linking of this term. This
> may conflict with your use of level 3 heading. Will you accept that as a
> tradeoff?
> 
> Why ''ital'' instead of //ital//?
> 
> You seem to require a space after the punctiation for list items, which
> I agree with. Why don't you require a space after punctuation for
> definitions and indentation? I found that occasionally the :indent
> pattern conflicted with smileys at the beginning of a line. I'm sure
> this can be fixed without requiring a space, but at the time I started
> to require a space because it seemed consistent enough. Thus:
> 
> : indent
> 
> and
> 
> ; term: definition
> 
> Just a note: I use __underline__ as well, but I realized while
> implementing it, that the later versions of HTML deprecate <u>. Maybe an
> appropriate comment should be part of the document. I'm using a
> strong-element with CSS to indicate non-bold and underline.
> 
> I propose the following rules for removal, because they will be rarely
> used be newbies:
> 
> Images -- Oddmuse places images on pages instead of using attachments.
> This has the side effect that uploaded images are stored together with
> their MIME type and the correct extension is not necessary. Example:
> 
> http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse/Blue_Headings_Screenshot
> 
> To inline the image, I would use [[image:Blue Headings Screenshot]].
> 
> Strike -- doesn't have potential conflicts with horizontal lines and
> traditional ASCII rendering of the m-dash---like this--- and the n-dash
> -- like this? Plus: Is this used often enough?
> 
> Monospace: Is this used often enough? I'm using {{double braces}} for
> footnotes in one of my extensions, because braces seemed to be "not
> taken". Actually, now that I look at
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandard again, I see that
> there are some unrelated rules for braces. I'm using ##double hashes##
> myself for monospaced text, and %%double percents%% for unprocessed text
> -- two examples I picked from that list. Why invent something new?
> 
> Text Indent, Definition, Superscript, Subscript -- Are these used often
> enough? I'm not against supporting them, but it seems a wasted effort.
> 
> Anyway, that's it for now. :)
> 
> Alex.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University                         Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
350 Victoria St.                           Fax: 416/979-5265
Toronto, ON                                email: salustri at ryerson.ca
M5B 2K3  Canada                            http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/