[Pmwiki-users] the descriptions of emphasis

[John Rankin]

On Saturday, 4 December 2004 7:37 AM, Tom Holroyd <tomh at kurage.nimh.nih.gov> wrote:
>I certainly agree, 1) html is not enough, and 2) it has its 
>problems.
>
>Special features, like (:searchbox:), are quite reasonable.
>They aren't just shortcuts; they add functionality, since they 
>can call arbitrary php code (or rather, that is possible).
>
>http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWikiPhilosophy #2 is right 
>on.  Yes.
>
>I'd add that if you want to make the editing environment simple, 
>then what you can accomplish is going to be simple, so live with 
>that and don't try to create an elaborate, new, ad-hoc syntax.
>
>One of the benefits of html/xml is that it is extensible.  In 
>keeping with that philosophy, I think PmWiki already has enough 
>mechanisms so that people can create custom markup, with things 
>like (:css ...:), etc.
>
>I don't want to have to remember /*' weird markup rules `*\.
>One or two delimiters, like (: and %, plus extensibility, should 
>be enough.
>
>And I don't see why <em>emphasis</em> should be disallowed.  
>It's simple. (:em emphasis:)?  %em% emphasis %%?
>
>Dr. Tom Holroyd
>"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and
>are the portals of discovery." -- James Joyce
>

Patrick's reply is perhaps over-modest. One of the most powerful
and important differences between pmwiki markup and html is that
pmwiki is mostly media-neutral. That is, you can translate it into
xhtml for the web and something else for, say, print.

Thus WikiWord becomes '<a ...>WikiWord</a>' for the web but
perhaps 'WikiWord (page 64)' in a printable pdf.

So while a site that's web-only may choose to allow html markup,
a site that wants to use pmwiki as the one authoritative source
for publishing to multiple media would stick to pure wiki markup.

The more web-specific things an author adds to a page, the harder
it becomes to re-purpose the page for a different medium.


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin