[pmwiki-users] Background image

[Hans]

Sunday, March 18, 2007, 5:53:57 PM, Dr wrote:

> Thanks.  From reading the two reply's to my question, it appears getting
> a simple background image displayed in a page section is but yet another
> "kludge fix in config" solution for what should be a rather simple wiki
> markup process.  This seems especially true given that there are 
> background wiki markups that work for tables and cells.

I disagree to calling it a cludge fix.
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/BackgroundImages
Markup (:background:) provides a markup definition
you need to add to your config or add as a script.
But adding components this way to add features to PmWiki is hardly
a kludge fix. It is PmWiki's way in providing  a lean core script and
offer loads of add on modules for all kind of purposes.

Once you got your new background markup defined in config.php
you can use the new directive on any wiki page, adding background
images to any division your skin sports.

I can suggest another perhaps more wikiish alternative:
include the script stylepage.php from
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CSSInWikiPages
then you can create custom style sheets which you can use for any page
by including very short markup. Define your background images in these
style pages using standard css.


> Venting -- Sure it's nice to have skins (& CSSs) for site development.
> .....    every house being basically the same theme, .....
> Furthermore, in this (wiki)
> development, there's rules that prohibit homeowners from changing the
> color scheme of the rooms in their own house.
>.....
> should be a relatively simple, end user (wiki) 
> process.

I guess you wish maximum user power in choosing colors and background
images. I think with the above mentioned cookbook recipes we already
got that possibility. But speaking as a skin designer I can also say
that a skin can be a very carefully composed construct, using various
colours for various parts of the page, to create some harmonious
effect. Often that can be easily ruined by applying a different
colour or image for a particular page division. So with the freedom to
paint your rooms you can easily mess up the walls. But maybe you like
it that way.

To add to the flexibility already there: we can also choose from
different skin designs, create our own, apply one skin to one page and
another to a second or different group, etc.

And in my own skin designs I given options to choose from different
colour schemes. And this choice can be made by site visitors, so a
user can use pmwiki.org and have it in a blue theme one week, and
when he gets tired of it he can change it to gold or night black or
some other scheme. You can't do that in your own home.

Or you can apply (:theme:) markup on pages to give them different looks.

But what we have not implemented is a form based approach on a skin
configuration wiki page, where a user can select from given choices,
or type in colour codes, for different skin sections, and all this is
creating a skin configuration saved on a page. Or maybe we have....


Hans