[Pmwiki-users] Problem with %define= ... %

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 01:14:49PM +1300, John Rankin wrote:
> >Well, I'm thinking ahead to the day when we might want to support
> >more than css class definitions; e.g., to style the <dfn> tag:
> >
> >   (:css dfn { font-style:normal; } :)
> 
> I need to think about this. 

After reading your excellent reply, so do I.  :-)

> My first reaction is that is seems
> somehow wrong to create a simple markup to hide the complexities
> of html, then expect authors to know which markups turn into 
> what html elements. 

Yup.  I somehow like the idea that there would be a way for authors
to style markups without having to know what PmWiki is doing internally.

> Similarly, is 'css' the best choice of directive?

Well, this one isn't obvious.  I certainly don't want to define my own
set of property names for styles -- for the most part CSS properties 
are reasonably named and I don't want to force authors who *do* know 
CSS to have to go through some sort of mapping.  Plus, it'd be nice
to not have to reinvent CSS documentation and to be able to refer new
authors to existing guidebooks.

So if it really is CSS that we're using here, perhaps we should go ahead
and refer to it that way in the markup.  But I also like your suggestion
of (:style ... :), because it makes it clear we're affecting a wikistyle.

> Can we not do something like use the opening markup characters,
> or give the markups real world names?
> 
>     (:style '' ...
> 
> seems more recognisable than
> 
>     (:css em ...

Yes, but we'll have to build/maintain a table to map markup names 
to the corresponding CSS selector used in styling that markup.  Perhaps
this could be largely done as an optional parameter to the Markup() 
call when the markup is defined.  

Pm