[Pmwiki-users] Skins

[Thomas -Balu- Walter]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 07:23:41AM -0700, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> It's not that I can't/won't make it work as a PHP file, it's that I 
> think that encoding skin templates as PHP files will be relatively ugly
> far more difficult to read, which will discourage many non-PHP folks.
> Nils Knappmeier came to a similar conclusion in [1]:
> 
>     Also, I'm beginning to realize that a template of this kind would 
>     be all but easy to read. From that point of view, [I've] seen 
>     better approaches in the other threads of this topic.
> 
> But my offer from one of my previous messages ([2]) still stands--if you'll
> build a sample skin.php file that shows what you think a skin file ought to
> look like as a .php file, I'll look into finding ways to make it work 
> and/or tell you what limitations it might impose on the resulting output.  
> You don't have to build a fancy skin--just showing me what a skin.php 
> file could look like for PmWiki's "classic" skin [3] is sufficient.
> 
> 1.  http://pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users_pmichaud.com/2004-February/003049.html
> 2.  http://pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users_pmichaud.com/2004-February/003000.html
> 3.  http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki?skin=classic

I'm sorry - I wrote the message before reading that you already finished
the new templating engine and it looks nice so far (I need to have to
work with it to finally decide if I like it or not ;).

I was afraid, that a simple "replacement"-template system would make it
even harder for special needs. E.g. one thing I've done in the last
0.5-release was to add markup conditionally. 

E.g. if Group.SideBar exists, add a <div> with header including it - if
not just skip the <div>. This also included having a different CSS
definition for some parts conditionally.

But after (quickly) reading your release-notes for the new version I think
something like this can be done using functions inside the template. 

I am really new to pmWiki but I get more and more impressed how well
thought and great done your work is! =)

     Balu