[Pmwiki-users] intuitive learning

Nils Knappmeier nk
Tue Feb 24 17:15:41 CST 2004


Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

>On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 03:43:29PM -0500, Lloyd Budd wrote:
>  
>
>>I am wondering if many people customize PmWiki:EditQuickReference much 
>>?  Just getting started, and it does not seem well laid out, or include 
>>the items that I am finding myself trying to remember again and again.  
>>Possibly, this would be a good item to work on together.
>>    
>>
>
>Feel free to modify the EditQuickReference page on pmichaud.com--if
>I generally agree with any changes made then they'll automatically make it 
>into the next release.   The current EditQuickReference page is mostly
>based on something I threw together a long time ago.
>
>  
>
There just came an idea to my mind that I'd like to share. The problem 
that I have with PmWiki at the moment is, that there seem to be so many 
functions that are either undocumented oder just hard to find. The stuff 
on the QuickReference on the other hand is something that I'm doing just 
like that, without thinking.
To come to the point: How would it be to have the QuickReference 
randomly generated.
Imagine having a pool of hints and tips (maybe as WikiGroup). And 
everytime somebody
edits a page, one of these hints is chosen at random and displayed at 
the place of the QuickReference.
Like: Did you know that could can create a link to your Profile using 
[[~name]]
or  "Did you know that you can delete pages by just...?"
   (How does this actually work? I didn't know that was possible.)


Nils




>>Before I consider that issue, I am wondering if I am missing something 
>>conceptually between the differences of {{ }} and [[ ]] :
>>	A {{free link}}  suggests to me that an external link might look 
>>	like {{http://www.pmichaud.com PM}} , nope.
>>	An [[http://www.pmichaud.com external link]] suggests to me [[free 
>>link]], nope.
>>I think what I have presented is a usual "mental model".  Was this a 
>>design decision, an implementation detail, or something else?
>>    
>>
>
>Mostly an implementation detail.  Before we had free links we had already
>developed the [[<linkref> <text>]] syntax, so to maintain compatibility
>we used {{...}} to denote free links.  Also it was felt that {{free link}}
>was less obtrusive to reading (markup) text than using square brackets.
>
>  
>
>>Eureka!  I understand now. If {{free link}} did not have unique syntax 
>>, additional analysis of the lexicons would be required.
>>    
>>
>
>Indeed, and they really do mean different things...
>
>[[PmWiki text]]  
>   links to a page named "PmWiki" and displays as "text"
>{{PmWiki text}}  
>   links to a page named "PmWikiText" and displays as "PmWiki text"
>
>So there has to be some sort of syntax to indicate which meaning
>is intended.
>
>Pm
>
>  
>




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