[pmwiki-devel] {~varname} vs. {~$:varname} in ZAP

Ben Stallings ben at interdependentweb.com
Thu Jun 14 09:44:46 CDT 2007


At Dan's request, I'm bringing a disagreement he and I have had by 
private email to the list for other folks' feedback.

In the most recent version of ZAP, he has provided the new markup
  {~Author$:varname}
which retrieves the varname page text variable from Author's Profiles 
page.  This is a shortcut for
  {Profiles/Author$:varname}
and for sites that use ZAP for storing registration data, it's a big 
help... especially if you should decide in the future to change the page 
group where the registration data is stored: you can change it in one 
place (Site/ZAPConfig) without having to update all the markup 
site-wide.  So I'm a big fan of this markup.

However, he's also provided a further shortcut for retrieving the 
current user's data (i.e. {~{AuthId}$:varname} ).  His markup is
  {~varname}
I feel strongly that this should be
  {~$:varname}
instead, so that it's comparable to {*$:varname} and {=$:varname}.  I 
feel that omitting the $: obscures the meaning of the markup -- all 
other page-text-variable markup uses $:, and this is page-text-variable 
markup, therefore in my mind it should use $:.

Dan wrote, "Why not post this issue to the list and see if there is any 
feedback from others. I prefer the simpler notation, but am willing to 
go with any consensus. It's easy enough to customize this of course in 
your own wiki--but that skirts the issue of what is best for the 
community. So let's see what others say."  And so here we are.

I realize this is a pretty trivial thing, but because it's such a new 
feature, it hasn't yet been entrenched in anyone's site (even Dan's, 
since I assume he's now using ZAPwiki), so there's still time to change 
it.  Thanks in advance for your feedback.  --Ben S.



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