[pmwiki-users] formatting, indent

[John Rankin]

On Tuesday, 7 February 2006 3:14 AM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 03:45:34PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
>> On 2/5/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>> > On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 12:47:56AM +0100, Stephan Schildberg wrote:
>> > > How about ->-> ?
>> >
>> > Hey, that's not bad.  How about ->> instead?
>> 
>> I like ->>
>> 
>> > Do we need multi-level indents?
>> 
>> Not sure.  I wouldn't think so.
>> 
>> See also
>> 
>>    
>http://pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2005-July/015430.html
>
>Thinking about it some more, I'm a little worried about the
>conflict between
>
>    ->     # indent entire paragraph
>    ->>    # indent just the first line of the paragraph
>
>Part of me feels that if "->" indents an entire paragraph, then
>"->>" ought to indent the entire paragraph *and* indent the first
>line further.
>
<snip>
>Which all comes around to something I've been able to answer
>for quite some time -- we really do need a markup that can be
>used to mean "start a new paragraph".
>

Just an observation...

I'm not clear why a markup is needed to "indent the first line
of this paragraph". Arguably, this is a presentation decision
best left to the administrator to set in a css. A common print
convention is to indent the first line of a paragraph if it
follows another paragraph. But one doesn't normally indent the
first line if it follows a heading, a list or some other flow
break. As Hagan says, one might also want to set $HTMLVSpace = 
''; -- AFAIK common practice is not to combine spacing with 
indenting.

If it relies on markup to achieve first line indentation, what 
is the reader to make of a paragraph which isn't indented, or 
a long page with some paragraphs having the firt line indented 
but not others? If there are multiple authors, how will the 
indenting convention for the site be communicated and monitored?

I guess I'm suggesting that sites wanting this might like to
consider setting a site or group-wide css rule, rather than
adding a markup rule. I question whether it's pmwiki's job to
produce output that's "just like in books" -- that's the job
of a site-specific css. PmWiki already produces output that
contains all the semantics necessary to format the site any
way one chooses.

The rule would be "if a p follows a p, indent the first line".

Just my 0.05¢ on the subject.

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin